ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional and Applied Plant Genomics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1644130
This article is part of the Research TopicPioneering Climate-Resilient Agriculture: Integrative Genomics and Phenomics for Crop EnhancementView all articles
Analysis of the Mitochondrial Genome of the Camellia sinensis cv. 'Zhuyeqi': Multichromosomal Structure, RNA Editing Sites, and Evolutionary Characterization
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology, Loudi, China
- 2Hunan University of Humanities Science and Technology, Loudi, China
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This study is the first to systematically analyze the mitochondrial genome of Camellia sinensis cv. 'Zhuyeqi'. The genome consists of one circular chromosome and six linear chromosomes, with a total length of 911,255 base pairs (bp) and a Guanine-Cytosine (GC) content of 46%. A total of 77 functional genes were annotated, including 38 protein-coding genes (PCGs). Repeated genes, such as trnM-CAT (5 copies), were identified, along with heterogeneous intron distributions in the nad1/2/5/7 genes. RNA editing analysis identified 556 C-to-U editing sites, with significant enrichment in ccmFn (38 sites) and ccmB (34 sites). Codon usage analysis showed that leucine (Leu, 10%) and arginine (Arg, 7%) are the most frequently used amino acids. Repetitive sequence analysis revealed that dispersed repeats (780, 72%) dominate, while satellite deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) displayed significant distribution biases on chromosomes chr1 (11 repeats) and chr3 (5 repeats). Non-synonymous substitution rate (Ka)/Synonymous substitution rate (Ks) analysis indicated that 37 PCGs are under varying selection pressures (0.09–2.70). Among these, rps4 (Pi=0.09) and atp8 (Pi=0.09) showed notable variation, while rps19 (Pi=0) was completely conserved. Comparative genomics revealed 66 homologous fragments (25,656 bp) shared between the mitochondria and chloroplasts, including 27 intact genes such as trnA-UGC, confirming the occurrence of horizontal gene transfer events. Synteny analysis showed that the mitochondrial genome of Camellia sinensis cv. 'Zhuyeqi' has a highly conserved structure compared to closely related species. This study lays a theoretical foundation for analyzing the structure and understanding the molecular evolution mechanisms of the tea plant mitochondrial genome.
Keywords: Camellia sinensis, Mitochondrial Genome, multichromosomal structure, RNA Editing, phylogenetic relationships
Received: 09 Jun 2025; Accepted: 10 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Zhou, Wang, Chen, You and Gong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Zhiyin Chen, Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology, Loudi, China
Yihui Gong, Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology, Loudi, China
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