The compact mitogenome of Ceratocystiopsis pallidobrunnea

Abstract

Ceratocystiopsis is a fungal genus that has been assigned to the Ophiostomatales, fungi known for their association with various bark beetles and other arthropods. The mitochondrial genome of Ceratocystiopsis pallidobrunnea has been characterized and compared with other members of the genus Ceratocystiopsis and Ophiostomatales. At 29 022 bp, the mitogenome of C. pallidobrunnea is the smallest reported so far for this genus. Gene arrangement was observed to be conserved for this group of fungi and mitogenome variation appears to be mostly due to the absence and presence of introns. The long-term goal is to apply mitogenomes to resolve taxonomic issues within the Ophiostomatales and within the various genera that comprise the Ophiostomataceae.

The mitogenomes of Leptographium aureum, Leptographium sp., and Grosmannia fruticeta: expansion by introns

“…If this is true for other fungi, the splicing of mitochondrial introns and their reliance on cis- and trans-acting factors encoded by the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes may be a fortuitous mechanism that evolved to allow for finetuning mitochondrial function to specific environments and life histories. For members of the Ophiostomatales, mtDNA intron landscapes have been generated and biases with regards to intron insertion sites and genes that are more likely to be intron-rich, have been noted, but there are no conserved introns found in all members of this group of fungi (except for rnl -2450 that encodes for RPS3; Zubaer et al, 2021 ; Wai and Hausner, 2022 ). This might imply that fine-tuning mitochondrial gene regulation is not based on specific introns, instead based on an assemblage (or intron complement) composed of various introns (at various sites) that are “functionally” redundant.…”

“…(WIN(M)1376), and Grosmannia fruticeta (WIN(M)1600). This work is part of our ongoing effort to study the evolution of mitogenomes for members of the Ophiostomatales ( Abboud et al, 2018 ; Zubaer et al, 2018 , 2021 ; Wai and Hausner, 2021 , 2022 ) with the potential of gaining more insight into the evolution and systematics of these fungi.…”