Organellar genome evolution in Ribes alpinum L.
Ribes genus from the Grossulariaceae family, have been used in the food industry and for medicinal purposes for years. Despite the valuable medicinal values and the widespread occurrence of Ribes, many species have not been well known so far. One of these is the alpine currant Ribes alpinum L., which occurs natively in Europe. The study aimed to thoroughly understand and characterize the organelle genomes of R. alpinum, conduct their comparative analysis with available data for other representatives of Grossulariaceae and, in the case of the chloroplast genome, also with Saxifraga insolens Irmsch., a representative of the closely related Saxifragaceae family. The analysis of plastome interspecific variation revealed several hotspots of variation which could be useful as potential phylogenetic markers or specific DNA barcodes. The phenomenon of sequence transfer between the chloroplast and mitochondrial genomes and the relative synonymous codon usage between the plastome and mitogenome were also analyzed. Based on the plastome sequence, a phylogenetic analysis was also performed to verify the relatedness of R. alpinum to other currant species with previously published sequences of complete plastomes.