A complete mitochondrial genome for fragrant Chinese rosewood (Dalbergia odorifera, Fabaceae) with comparative analyses of genome structure and intergenomic sequence transfers

BACKGROUND: Dalbergia odorifera is an economically and culturally important species in the Fabaceae because of the high-quality lumber and traditional Chinese medicines made from this plant, however, overexploitation has increased the scarcity of D. odorifera. Given the rarity and the multiple uses of this species, it is important to expand the genomic resources for utilizing in applications such as tracking illegal logging, determining effective population size of wild stands, delineating pedigrees in marker assisted breeding programs, and resolving gene networks in functional genomics studies. Even the nuclear and chloroplast genomes have been published for D. odorifera, the complete mitochondrial genome has not been assembled or assessed for sequence transfer to other genomic compartments until now. Such work is essential in understanding structural and functional genome evolution in a lineage (Fabaceae) with frequent intergenomic sequence transfers. RESULTS: We integrated Illumina short-reads and PacBio CLR long-reads to assemble and annotate the complete mitochondrial genome of D. odorifera. The mitochondrial genome was organized as a single circular structure of 435 Kb in length containing 33 protein coding genes, 4 rRNA and 17 tRNA genes. Nearly 4.0% (17,386 bp) of the genome was annotated as repetitive DNA. From the sequence transfer analysis, it was found that 114 Kb of DNA originating from the mitochondrial genome has been transferred to the nuclear genome, with most of the transfer events having taken place relatively recently. The high frequency of sequence transfers from the mitochondria to the nuclear genome was similar to that of sequence transfer from the chloroplast to the nuclear genome. CONCLUSION: For the first-time, the complete mitochondrial genome of D. odorifera was assembled in this study, which will provide a baseline resource in understanding genomic evolution in the highly specious Fabaceae. In particular, the assessment of intergenomic sequence transfer suggests that transfers have been common and recent indicating a possible role in environmental adaptation as has been found in other lineages. The high turnover rate of genomic colinearly and large differences in mitochondrial genome size found in the comparative analyses herein providing evidence for the rapid evolution of mitochondrial genome structure compared to chloroplasts in Faboideae. While phylogenetic analyses using functional genes indicate that mitochondrial genes are very slowly evolving compared to chloroplast genes. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12864-021-07967-7.