Variation in Rice Plastid Genomes in Wide Crossing Reveals Dynamic Nucleo–Cytoplasmic Interaction

Plastid genomes (plastomes) of angiosperms are well known for their relative stability in size, structure, and gene content. However, little is about heredity variations wide crossing. To such an end, the plastomes five representative rice backcross inbred lines (BILs) developed from crosses O. glaberrima/O. sativa were analyzed. We found that size all was 134,580 bp, with a quadripartite structure included pair inverted repeat (IR) regions, small single-copy (SSC) region large (LSC) region. They contained 76 protein genes, 4 rRNA 30 tRNA genes. Although content stable, repeat-mediated recombination, expression, RNA editing extensively changed between maternal line BILs. These novel discoveries demonstrate crossing causes not only nuclear genomic but also plastome variation plants, plays critical role coordinating nuclear–cytoplasmic interaction.