The Complete Plastome Sequence of an Antarctic Bryophyte Sanionia uncinata (Hedw.) Loeske

Abstract

Organellar genomes of bryophytes are poorly represented with chloroplast genomes of only four mosses, four liverworts, and two hornworts being sequenced and annotated. Moreover, while Antarctic vegetation is dominated by the bryophytes, there are few reports on the plastid genomes for the Antarctic bryophytes. Sanionia uncinata (Hedw.) Loeske is one of the most dominant moss species in the maritime Antarctic. It has been researched as an important marker for ecological studies and as an extremophile plant for studies on stress tolerance. Here, we report the complete plastome sequence of S. uncinata , which can be exploited in comparative studies to identify the lineage-specific divergence across different species. The complete plastome of S. uncinata is 124,374 bp in length with a typical quadripartite structure of 114 unique genes including 82 unique protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes, and four rRNA genes. However, two genes encoding the α subunit of RNA polymerase (rpoA) and encoding cytochrome b6/f complex subunit VIII (petN) were absent. We could identify nuclear genes homologous to those genes, which suggests that rpoA and petN might have been relocated from the chloroplast genome to the nuclear genome.