ИСТИНА

One of the open questions of plant genomics is whether there are higher plants without a plastid genome. This is theoretically possible if genes in the plastid genome are either lost or transferred to the nuclear genome. Here, we present an analysis of Rhopalocnemis phalloides, a parasitic plant that, as it follows from genomic DNA sequencing, lacks the plastid genome. Apart from searching for the plastid genome, we also assembled its mitochondrial genome, which contains a number of fragments, transferred from the plastid genome when it was not yet lost. Analysis of these fragments gives us clues to the order of gene losses in the plastid genome.