One thousand plant transcriptomes and the phylogenomics of green plants

Abstract: Green plants (Viridiplantae) include around 450,000–500,000 species1, 2 of great diversity and have important roles in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Here, as part of the One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative, we sequenced the vegetative transcriptomes of 1,124 species that span the diversity of plants in a broad sense (Archaeplastida), including green plants (Viridiplantae), glaucophytes (Glaucophyta) and red algae (Rhodophyta). Our analysis provides a robust phylogenomic framework for examining the evolution of green plants. Most inferred species relationships are well supported across multiple species tree and supermatrix analyses, but discordance among plastid and nuclear gene trees at a few important nodes highlights the complexity of plant genome evolution, including polyploidy, periods of rapid speciation, and extinction. Incomplete sorting of ancestral variation, polyploidization and massive expansions of gene families punctuate the evolutionary history of green plants. Notably, we find that large expansions of gene families preceded the origins of green plants, land plants and vascular plants, whereas whole-genome duplications are inferred to have occurred repeatedly throughout the evolution of flowering plants and ferns. The increasing availability of high-quality plant genome sequences and advances in functional genomics are enabling research on genome evolution across the green tree of life

Molecular cloning and functional bacterial expression of a plant glucosidase specifically involved in alkaloid biosynthesis.

Monoterpenoid indole alkaloids are a vast and structurally complex group of plant secondary compounds. In contrast to other groups of plant products which produce many glycosides, indole alkaloids rarely occur as glucosides. Plants of Rauvolfia serpentina accumulate ajmaline as a major alkaloid, whereas cell suspension cultures of Rauvolfia mainly accumulate the glucoalkaloid raucaffricine at levels of 1.6 g/l. Cell cultures do contain a specific glucosidase. known as raucaffricine-O-beta-D-glucosidase (RG), which catalyzes the in vitro formation of vomilenine, a direct intermediate in ajmaline biosynthesis. Here, we describe the molecular cloning and functional expression of this enzyme in Escherichia coli. RG shows up to 60% amino acid identity with other glucosidases of plant origin and it shares several sequence motifs with family 1 glucosidases which have been characterized. The best substrate specificity for recombinant RG was raucaffricine (KM 1.3 mM, Vmax 0.5 nkat/microg protein) and only a few closely related structural derivatives were also hydrolyzed. Moreover, an early intermediate of ajmaline biosynthesis, strictosidine, is a substrate for recombinant RG (KM 1.8 mM, Vmax 2.6 pkat/microg protein) which was not observed for the low amounts of enzyme isolated from Rauvolfia cells