Plant organellar genomes: much done, much more to do.
Jie Wang, Shenglong Kan, Xuezhu Liao, Jiawei Zhou, Luke R Tembrock, Henry Daniell, Shuangxia Jin, Zhiqiang Wu
Author Information
Jie Wang: Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen 518120, China; College of Science, Health, Engineering and Education, Murdoch University, Perth, WA 6000-6999, Australia.
Shenglong Kan: Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen 518120, China; Marine College, Shandong University, Weihai, 264209, China.
Xuezhu Liao: Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen 518120, China.
Jiawei Zhou: Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen 518120, China; National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
Luke R Tembrock: Department of Agricultural Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
Henry Daniell: Department of Basic and Translational Sciences, School of Dental Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6030, USA. Electronic address: hdaniell@upenn.edu.
Zhiqiang Wu: Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen 518120, China. Electronic address: wuzhiqiang@caas.cn.
Plastids and mitochondria are the only organelles that possess genomes of endosymbiotic origin. In recent decades, advances in sequencing technologies have contributed to a meteoric rise in the number of published organellar genomes, and have revealed greatly divergent evolutionary trajectories. In this review, we quantify the abundance and distribution of sequenced plant organellar genomes across the plant tree of life. We compare numerous genomic features between the two organellar genomes, with an emphasis on evolutionary trajectories, transfers, the current state of organellar genome editing by transcriptional activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), transcription activator-like effector (TALE)-mediated deaminase, and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein (Cas), as well as genetic transformation. Finally, we propose future research to understand these different evolutionary trajectories, and genome-editing strategies to promote functional studies and eventually improve organellar genomes.
