Mitochondria and plastids have their own genomes that are generally maternally transmitted in animals and plants, but their modes of inheritance in most eukaryotes, which are unicellular, remain largely unknown. The team of Dr. Chuan Ku at the Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology unraveled extreme cyto-nuclear and mitochondrial-plastid phylogenomic discordance in the globally distributed microalgae, coccolithophores. Their convoluted organellar genome evolution is attributable to biparental inheritance, isogamous haplodiplontic life cycle, and other potential mechanisms. The work was published in New Phytologist in May 2022.

Article Link:https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.18219