Plastome sequencing of South American Podocarpus species reveals low rearrangement rates despite ancient gondwanan disjunctions.

BACKGROUND: Historical reconstructions within Podocarpaceae have provided valuable information to disentangle biogeographic scenarios that begun 65 Mya. However, early molecular phylogenies of Podocarpaceae failed to agree on the intergeneric relationships within the family. The aims of this study were to test whether plastome organization is stable within the genus Podocarpus, to estimate the selective regimes affecting plastome protein-coding genes, and to strengthen our understanding of the phylogenetic relationships and biogeographic history. METHODS AND RESULTS: We sequenced the plastomes of four South American species from Patagonia, southern Yungas, and Brazilian subtropical forests. We compared their plastomes to those published from Brazil, Africa, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia, along with representatives from other genera within Podocarpaceae as outgroups. The four newly sequenced plastomes ranged in size between 133,791 bp and 133,991 bp. Gene content and order among chloroplasts from South American, African and Asian Podocarpus were conserved and different from the plastome of P. totara, from New Zealand. Most genes showed substitution patterns consistent with a conservative selective regime. Phylogenies inferred from either complete sequences or protein coding regions were mostly congruent with previous studies, but showed earlier branching of P. salignus, P. totara and P. sellowii. CONCLUSIONS: Highly similar and conserved plastomes of African, South American and Asian species suggest that P. totara plastome should be revised and compared to other species from Oceanic distribution. Furthermore, given such structural conservation, we suggest plastome sequencing is not useful to test whether genomic order can be climatically or geologically structured.