Genome size reduction through illegitimate recombination counteracts genome expansion in Arabidopsis.

By Katrien M. Devos, James K. M. Brown, Jeffrey Bennetzen. Genome Research, 2002

695 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Genome size varies greatly across angiosperms. It is well documented that, in addition to polyploidization, retrotransposon amplification has been a major cause of genome expansion. The lack of evidence for counterbalancing mechanisms that curtail unlimited genome growth has made many of us wonder whether angiosperms have a "one-way ticket to genomic obesity." We have therefore investigated an angiosperm with a well-characterized and notably small genome, Arabidopsis thaliana, for evidence of genomic DNA loss. Our results indicate that illegitimate recombination is the driving force behind genome size decrease in Arabidopsis, removing at least fivefold more DNA than unequal homologous recombination. The presence of highly degraded retroelements also suggests that retrotransposon amplification has not been confined to the last 4 million years, as is indicated by the dating of intact retroelements.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/64836f7417362ecdefdc09cb73834afecf2d64bb

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Citations in the corpus

LTR_FINDER: an efficient tool for the prediction of full-length LTR retrotransposons (2007, background): “For example, their ampliﬁcation and removal shape the organization and change the size of genomes (9,10); their transposition eﬀects gene expression (11); and cases of gene movement via LTR retrotransposons were also reported recently (12).”
Recent Insights into Mechanisms of Genome Size Change in Plants (2010, background): “This diversity of genome size has generated considerable interest in the nature of sequence variation among genomes, the mechanisms that operate to add and/or remove DNA, and the suite of internal and external evolutionary forces that collectively shape or control the molecular drivers.”
Endosymbiotic gene transfer: organelle genomes forge eukaryotic chromosomes (2004, result): “These data indicate a high turnover of organelle sequences in the nucleus that is similar to that observed for other non-essential, intergenic sequence”
Rapid Evolution of Enormous, Multichromosomal Genomes in Flowering Plant Mitochondria with Exceptionally High Mutation Rates (2012, background): “In addition, recombination between repeated sequences (including very short repeats) has been shown to be an important mechanism for sequence deletion in plant nuclear genomes [68].”
Genome evolution in fungal plant pathogens: looking beyond the two-speed genome model (2020, neutral): “…by altering the expression of the effector (Chuong et al. , 2016; Omrane et al. , 2017), through disturbance through by ectopic recombination (Devos et al. , 2002), by leaking of silencing (Hollister and Gaut, 2009), or even by creating effector genes de novo (Nottensteiner et al. , 2018;…”
The repair of double-strand breaks in plants: mechanisms and consequences for genome evolution. (2004, background): “... duplications or possibly a complete genome duplication during evolution (Arabidopsis Genome Initiative, 2000) deletion formation must have played a prominent role resulting in the small size of the present day genome of thisplantspecies.Indeed,evidencethatArabidopsishaslost DNA over evolutionary”