ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
Genome copy number predicts extreme evolutionary rate variation in plant mitochondrial DNA.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ancient wheat DNA: How and what for?Journal, genetic engineering & biotechnology · 2026Article
- Repeat Proliferations in the Non-Coding Regions Drive Mitochondrial Genome Expansion inBiology · 2026Article
- Optimal Organelle Inheritance Strategies Under Different Changing Environments and Mutational Pressures.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Causes and consequences of cytonuclear incompatibility in hybrids of flowering plants.Journal of experimental botany · 2026Review
- Silene, a versatile model system: from sex and genome evolution to ecology and speciation.The New phytologist · 2026Review
- Article
- RhoMitoAnnotator and Polypods, Bioinformatics Tools for theInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2026Article
- Positive and relaxed selection on mitochondrial DNA in parasitic versus predatory mites.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Article
- The Mitochondrial Genome ofGenes · 2026Article
- De novo assembly of the first mitochondrial genome in Benincasa reveals structural dynamics and evolutionary insights in Cucurbitaceae.BMC plant biology · 2026Article
- Recombination and Retroprocessing in Broomrapes Reveal RNA-Mediated Gene Transfer Mechanism and a Generalizable Model for Mitochondrial Evolution in Heterotrophic Plants.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Molecular phylogenetics and evolutionary history ofFrontiers in plant science · 2026Review
- A record-setting mitogenome in the holoparasitic plant Balanophora yakushimensis accompanied by exceptional loss of organellar DNA repair and recombination genes.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Genome Architecture and Speciation in Plants and Animals.Molecular ecology · 2025Review
- Complete mitochondrial genome assembly and structural feature analysis of Thinopyrum elongatum (Poaceae).Planta · 2025Article
- Mitochondrial Genome Analysis ofEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- Altered Mitochondrial Respiration Is Associated With Loss of Nuclear-Encoded OXPHOS Genes in Parasitic Broomrapes.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Flipping the switch on some of the slowest mutating genomes: Direct measurements of plant mitochondrial and plastid mutation rates in msh1 mutants.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Natural Selection as the Primary Driver of Codon Usage Bias in the Mitochondrial Genomes of ThreeGenes · 2025Article
- Unequally Abundant Chromosomes and Unusual Collections of Transferred Sequences Characterize Mitochondrial Genomes of Gastrodia (Orchidaceae), One of the Largest Mycoheterotrophic Plant Genera.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Nuclear and organellar genomes can evolve at vastly different rates despite occupying the same cell. In most bilaterian animals, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) evolves faster than nuclear DNA, whereas this trend is generally reversed in plants. However, in some exceptional angiosperm clades, mtDNA substitution rates have increased up to 5,000-fold compared with closely related lineages. The mechanisms responsible for this acceleration are generally unknown. Because plants rely on homologous recombination to repair mtDNA damage, we hypothesized that mtDNA copy numbers may predict evolutionary rates, as lower copy numbers may provide fewer templates for such repair mechanisms. In support of this hypothesis, we found that copy number explains 47% of the variation in synonymous substitution rates of mtDNA across 60 diverse seed plant species representing ~300 million years of evolution. Copy number was also negatively correlated with mitogenome size, which may be a cause or consequence of mutation rate variation. Both relationships were unique to mtDNA and not observed in plastid DNA. These results suggest that homologous recombinational repair plays a role in driving mtDNA substitution rates in plants and may explain variation in mtDNA evolution more broadly across eukaryotes. Our findings also contribute to broader questions about the relationships between mutation rates, genome size, selection efficiency, and the drift-barrier hypothesis.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.