2026-04-17T01:27:52Zhttps://recercat.cat/oai/request

oai:recercat.cat:10230/557322025-12-12T04:01:29Zcom_2072_6col_2072_452952

00925njm 22002777a 4500 dc Aguileta, Gabriela author de Vienne, Damien M. author Ross, Oliver N. author Hood, Michael E. author Giraud, Tatiana author Petit, Elsa author Gabaldón Estevan, Juan Antonio, 1973- author 2023-02-13T08:54:40Z 2023-02-13T08:54:40Z 2014 From their origin as an early alpha proteobacterial endosymbiont to their current state as cellular organelles, large-scale genomic reorganization has taken place in the mitochondria of all main eukaryotic lineages. So far, most studies have focused on plant and animal mitochondrial (mt) genomes (mtDNA), but fungi provide new opportunities to study highly differentiated mtDNAs. Here, we analyzed 38 complete fungal mt genomes to investigate the evolution of mtDNA gene order among fungi. In particular, we looked for evidence of nonhomologous intrachromosomal recombination and investigated the dynamics of gene rearrangements. We investigated the effect that introns, intronic open reading frames (ORFs), and repeats may have on gene order. Additionally, we asked whether the distribution of transfer RNAs (tRNAs) evolves independently to that of mt protein-coding genes. We found that fungal mt genomes display remarkable variation between and within the major fungal phyla in terms of gene order, genome size, composition of intergenic regions, and presence of repeats, introns, and associated ORFs. Our results support previous evidence for the presence of mt recombination in all fungal phyla, a process conspicuously lacking in most Metazoa. Overall, the patterns of rearrangements may be explained by the combined influences of recombination (i.e., most likely nonhomologous and intrachromosomal), accumulated repeats, especially at intergenic regions, and to a lesser extent, mobile element dynamics. The authors thank Fran Supek for helpful discussions and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticisms. This work was supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF-No.274223) to G.A., the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship for Career Development under grant agreement no. 255396 to O.N.R., the Agence National de la Recherche (ANR 09-BLAN-Fungi-Sex) and the ERC starting (GenomeFun 309403) to T.Gi., the grants (BIO2012-37161 and BFU2009-09168) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness to T.Ga., and the National Science Foundation grant (NSF DEB 0747222) to M.E.H. Basidiomycota Sordariomycetes Basal fungi Fungal phylogeny Rearrangement rates Genome size reduction Endosymbiosis High variability of mitochondrial gene order among fungi