AUTHOR=Shan Yuanyu , Li Jingling , Zhang Xue , Yu Jie 

TITLE=The complete mitochondrial genome of Amorphophallus albus and development of molecular markers for five Amorphophallus species based on mitochondrial DNA

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Plant Science

VOLUME=14

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2023.1180417

DOI=10.3389/fpls.2023.1180417

ISSN=1664-462X

ABSTRACT=<sec><title>Introduction</title><p><italic>Amorphophallus albus</italic> is an herbaceous, cormous, perennial plant used as a food source and traditional medicine in Asia. </p></sec><sec><title>Methods</title><p>In this study, we assembled and annotated the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of <italic>A. albus</italic>. Then we analyzed the repeated elements and mitochondrial plastid sequences (MTPTs), predicted RNA editing sites in mitochondrial protein-coding genes (PCGs). Lastly, we inferred the phylogenetic relationships of <italic>A. albus</italic> and other angiosperms based on mitochondrial PCGs, and designed two molecular markers based on mitochondrial DNA.</p></sec><sec><title>Results and discussion</title><p>The complete mitogenome of <italic>A. albus</italic> consists of 19 circular chromosomes. And the total length of <italic>A. albus</italic> mitogenome is 537,044 bp, with the longest chromosome measuring 56,458 bp and the shortest measuring 12,040 bp. We identified and annotated a total of 36 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 21 tRNA genes, and 3 rRNA genes in the mitogenome. Additionally, we analyzed mitochondrial plastid DNAs (MTPTs) and identified 20 MTPTs between the two organelle genomes, with a combined length of 22,421 bp, accounting for 12.76% of the plastome. Besides, we predicted a total of 676 C to U RNA editing sites on 36 protein-coding genes of high confidence using Deepred-mt. Furthermore, extensive genomic rearrangement was observed between <italic>A. albus</italic> and the related mitogenomes. We conducted phylogenetic analyses based on mitochondrial PCGs to determine the evolutionary relationships between <italic>A. albus</italic> and other angiosperms. Finally, we developed and validated two molecular markers, Ai156 and Ai976, based on two intron regions (<italic>nad2i156</italic> and <italic>nad4i976</italic>) respectively. The discrimination success rate was 100 % in validation experiments for five widely grown konjac species. Our results reveal the multi-chromosome mitogenome of <italic>A. albus</italic>, and the developed markers will facilitate molecular identification of this genus.</p></sec>