Abstract
Non-functional trnF pseudogenes that rarely occur in embryophytes have been found in Solanaceae. We have sequenced the trnL-F intergenic spacer of four species of Solanum, and found duplicated regions of the original trnF gene. These repeats were 94–260 bp long causing large length variation in the trnL-F intergenic spacer resulting from differences in pseudogene copy number (2–4). The duplicated trnF regions are comprised of several highly structured motifs, which were partial residues, or entire parts of the Anticodon, T- and D-domains of the original gene, but all lacked the acceptor stems at the 5′- or 3′-end. Pseudogenes included several transitions and transversions in their sequences compared to the original trnF gene. Among pseudogene copies, T-domains were more frequent and fragmented than D-domain elements. Our results demonstrate that although chloroplast evolution is uniform such structural duplications in the sequences used for phylogenetic reconstructions should be treated with great caution.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to the Botanical Museum (H) of University of Helsinki, Finland for providing leaf segments for our analysis. This study was supported by a Hungarian State Eötvös Research Grant (MÖB/90-1/2011) provided for P. P.
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Poczai, P., Hyvönen, J. Identification and characterization of plastid trnF(GAA) pseudogenes in four species of Solanum (Solanaceae). Biotechnol Lett 33, 2317–2323 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-011-0701-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-011-0701-x