Mitochondrial-plastid interdependence within the plant cell is presumed to be essential, but measurable demonstration of this intimate interaction is difficult. At the level of cellular metabolism, several biosynthetic pathways involve both mitochondrialand plastid-localized steps. However, at an environmental response level, it is not clear how the two organelles intersect in programmed cellul...

The cryptomonads are a group of unicellular algae that acquired photosynthesis through the engulfment of a red algal cell, a process called secondary endosymbiosis. Here, we present the complete plastid genome sequence of the secondarily nonphotosynthetic species Cryptomonas paramecium CCAP977/2a. The approximately 78 kilobase pair (Kbp) C. paramecium genome contains 82 predicted protein genes,...

Light perception by photoreceptors impacts plastid transcription, development, and differentiation. This photoreceptor-dependent activity suggests a mechanism for photoregulation of gene expression in the nucleus and plastid that serves to coordinate expression of critical genes of these two organelles. This coordinate expression is required for proper stoichiometric accumulation of components ...

In many dinoflagellate species, the plastid genome has been proposed to exist as a limited number of single-gene minicircles, and many genes normally found in the plastid genome are nuclear-encoded. Unlike the nuclear-encoded plastid-directed gene products whose expression is often regulated by the circadian clock, little is known about expression of minicircle genes. Furthermore, even the plas...

Although gene coevolution has been widely observed within individuals and between different organisms, rarely has this phenomenon been investigated within a phylogenetic framework. The Geraniaceae is an attractive system in which to study plastid-nuclear genome coevolution due to the highly elevated evolutionary rates in plastid genomes. In plants, the plastid-encoded RNA polymerase (PEP) is a ...

Within plastid-bearing species, the mutation rate of the plastid genome is often assumed to be greater than that of the mitochondrial genome. This assumption is based on early, pioneering studies of land plant molecular evolution, which uncovered higher rates of synonymous substitution in plastid versus mitochondrial DNAs. However, much of the plastid-containing eukaryotic diversity falls outsi...

In this article recent progress on the elucidation of the dynamic composition and structure of plastid nucleoids is reviewed from a structural perspective. Plastid nucleoids are compact structures of multiple copies of different forms of ptDNA, RNA, enzymes for replication and gene expression as well as DNA binding proteins. Although early electron microscopy suggested that plastid DNA is almos...

In flowering plants, three genomes (nuclear, mitochondrial, and plastid) coexist and intracellular horizontal transfer of DNA is prevalent, especially from the plastid to the mitochondrion genome. However, the plastid genomes are generally conserved in evolution and have long been considered immune to foreign DNA. Recently, the opposite direction of DNA transfer from the mitochondrial to the pl...

Mitochondrial-plastid interdependence within the plant cell is presumed to be essential, but measurable demonstration of this intimate interaction is difficult. At the level of cellular metabolism, several biosynthetic pathways involve both mitochondrial- and plastid-localized steps. However, at an environmental response level, it is not clear how the two organelles intersect in programmed cell...