title: Mutational dynamics of aroid chloroplast genomes.
abstract: A characteristic feature of eukaryote and prokaryote genomes is the co-occurrence of nucleotide substitution and insertion/deletion (indel) mutations. Although similar observations have also been made for chloroplast DNA, genome-wide associations have not been reported. We determined the chloroplast genome sequences for two morphotypes of taro (Colocasia esculenta; family Araceae) and compared these with four publicly available aroid chloroplast genomes. Here, we report the extent of genome-wide association between direct and inverted repeats, indels, and substitutions in these aroid chloroplast genomes. We suggest that alternative but not mutually exclusive hypotheses explain the mutational dynamics of chloroplast genome evolution.
authors.forename: Ibrar
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ahmed
authors.forename: Patrick J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Biggs
authors.forename: Peter J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Matthews
authors.forename: Lesley J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Collins
authors.forename: Michael D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Hendy
authors.forename: Peter J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Lockhart
mesh_terms: D029064:Araceae / Q000235:genetics*; D030561:Databases, Nucleic Acid; D054628:Genome, Chloroplast; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D054643:INDEL Mutation; D055029:Inverted Repeat Sequences; D059645:Mutation Rate; D010802:Phylogeny; D017354:Point Mutation; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid