The flowering plant genus Oenothera is uniquely suited for studying molecular mechanisms of speciation. It assembles an intriguing combination of genetic features, including permanent translocation heterozygosity, biparental transmission of plastids, and a general interfertility of well-defined species. This allows an exchange of plastids and nuclei between species often resulting in plastome–genome incompatibility. For evaluation of its molecular determinants we present the complete nucleotide sequences of the five basic, genetically distinguishable plastid chromosomes of subsection Oenothera (=Euoenothera) of the genus, which are associated in distinct combinations with six basic genomes. Sizes of the chromosomes range from 163 365 bp (plastome IV) to 165 728 bp (plastome I), display between 96.3% and 98.6% sequence similarity and encode a total of 113 unique genes. Plastome diversification is caused by an abundance of nucleotide substitutions, small insertions, deletions and repetitions. The five plastomes deviate from the general ancestral design of plastid chromosomes of vascular plants by a subsection-specific 56 kb inversion within the large single-copy segment. This inversion disrupted operon structures and predates the divergence of the subsection presumably 1 My ago. Phylogenetic relationships suggest plastomes I–III in one clade, while plastome IV appears to be closest to the common ancestor.

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Wild relatives or progenitors of crops are important resources for breeding and for understanding domestication. Identifying them, however, is difficult because of extinction, hybridization, and the challenge of distinguishing them from feral forms. Here, we use collection-based systematics, iconography, and resequenced accessions of Citrullus lanatus and other species of Citrullus to search for the potential progenitor of the domesticated watermelon. A Sudanese form with nonbitter whitish pulp, known as the Kordofan melon (C. lanatus subsp. cordophanus), appears to be the closest relative of domesticated watermelons and a possible progenitor, consistent with newly interpreted Egyptian tomb paintings that suggest that the watermelon may have been consumed in the Nile Valley as a dessert by 4360 BP. To gain insights into the genetic changes that occurred from the progenitor to the domesticated watermelon, we assembled and annotated the genome of a Kordofan melon at the chromosome level, using a combination of Pacific Biosciences and Illumina sequencing as well as Hi-C mapping technologies. The genetic signature of bitterness loss is present in the Kordofan melon genome, but the red fruit flesh color only became fixed in the domesticated watermelon. We detected 15,824 genome structural variants (SVs) between the Kordofan melon and a typical modern cultivar, “97103,” and mapping the SVs in over 400 Citrullus accessions revealed shifts in allelic frequencies, suggesting that fruit sweetness has gradually increased over the course of watermelon domestication. That a likely progenitor of the watermelon still exists in Sudan has implications for targeted modern breeding efforts.

In tomato plants ( Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.), the genes Tm-2 and Tm-2(2) confer resistance to Tomato mosaic virus (ToMV). Sequence analysis of ToMV strains able to break the Tm-2 or Tm-2(2) resistance revealed distinct amino acid exchanges in the viral 30 kDa protein, suggesting that the movement protein is recognized by both resistance genes to induce the plant defense reaction. To analyze the interactions between the ToMV movement protein and the Tm-2 and Tm-2(2) genes in detail, we generated transgenic tomato lines expressing various movement protein gene constructs. Crosses of the transgenic tomato lines with cultivars containing either the Tm-2 or the Tm-2(2) gene demonstrated that both genes are able to elicit a hypersensitive reaction in response to movement proteins from resistance inducing ToMV strains. However, the domains and the structural requirements for induction of the necrotic response by the ToMV movement protein are completely different for either resistance gene. In the context of the Tm-2 gene, the resistance determinant lies within the N-terminal 188 amino acids of the ToMV movement protein. Interaction of the 30 kDa protein with the Tm-2(2) gene requires two distinct domains localized at the C-terminus and in a different region of the protein, respectively.