plant mitochondria

Palmer JD, Adams KL, Cho Y, Parkinson CL, Qiu Y-L & Song K 2000 Dynamic evolution of plant mitochondrial genomes: mobile genes and introns and highly variable mutation rates. PNAS 97:6960-6966.

• we summarize our recent studies showing that angiosperm mitochondrial (mt) genomes have experienced remarkably high rates of gene loss and concomitant transfer to the nucleus and of intron acquisition by horizontal transfer
• these findings mostly arise from a Southern blot survey of gene and intron distribution in 281 diverse angiosperms
• these blots reveal numerous losses of mt ribosomal protein genes but, with one exception, only rare loss of respiratory genes
• plant mt genomes also acquire sequences by horizontal transfer
• whereas all previously examined angiosperm mtDNAs have low rates of synonymous substitutions, mtDNAs of two distantly related angiosperms have highly accelerated substitution rates