The complete nucleotide sequence of the chloroplast genome of Citrus sinensis (L.) Osbeck var 'Ridge Pineapple' has been determined (Fig. 1). This genome is 160,129 bp in length and includes a pair of inverted repeats (IR) of 26,996 bp separated by small and large single copy (SSC, LSC) regions of 18,393 bp and 87,744 bp, respectively. A total of 133 genes was detected, 113 are single copy, while 20 are duplicated in inverted repeat regions. Eighty-nine genes code for proteins, including nine genes duplicated in the inverted repeat. There are four rRNA genes and 30 distinct tRNAs, 7 of which are duplicated in the inverted repeat. Seventeen genes have introns, 14 of which contain a single intron while three (clpP, rps12, ycf3) have two introns. The genome consists of 49.94% protein-coding, 42.65% non-coding, 1.74% tRNA and 5.65% rRNA genes. The GC and AT content in the Citrus chloroplast genome is 38.48% and 61.52%, respectively. The overall AT content is similar to tobacco (62.2%), rice (61.1%) and maize (61.5%). The AT content of the LSC and SSC regions are 63.19% and 66.66% respectively, whereas that of the IR-regions is 57.05% due to the presence of an rRNA gene cluster. infA, a gene coding for a translation initiation factor in other plant species, is absent in the Citrus genome. The inverted repeat region has expanded to duplicate rps19 and the first 84 amino acids of rpl22. The rpl22 gene in the IRb region has a nonsense mutation resulting in 9 stop codons. Both the IR expansion and the presence of internal stop codons in rpl22 were confirmed by PCR amplification and sequencing using primers that flank the IR/LSC boundaries.

Repeat analysis identified 29 direct and inverted repeats 30 bp or longer with a sequence identity ≥ 90% (Table 1). The longest repeat, other than the IR is 53 bp in length. Most of the repeated sequences are located in the intergenic regions while some are in protein-coding regions (i.e., psaA, psaB; Table 1).

DNA and EST sequences were compared by aligning the ~92,000 publicly available Citrus sinensis expressed sequence tag (EST) sequences with the genes extracted from completed Citrus chloroplast genome sequence. Five non-synonymous nucleotide substitutions were identified in the protein-coding transcripts of petL, psbH, ycf2 and ndhA (Table 2). In ycf2 two amino acid substitutions were found, which resulted in a change from hydrophobic non-polar to hydrophilic acidic and hydrophilic polar amino acids, respectively. The substitution in the ndhA protein resulted in a change from a hydrophilic polar to a hydrophobic non-polar. In contrast, only one synonymous substitution was detected in transcripts coding for rps18. In non-protein-coding regions, seven additional differences were detected, including one in the intron of ycf3 and five in the ribosomal RNA gene rrn23 (Table 2). The differences could be due to mRNA editing, sequencing error, or polymorphisms between the tissues used for genome versus EST sequencing.

The data matrix for phylogenetic analyses included 61 protein-coding genes for 30 taxa, including 28 angiosperms and two gymnosperm outgroups (Pinus and Ginkgo). The data set comprised 45,573 aligned nucleotide positions but when the gaps were excluded there were 39,618 characters. Maximum Parsimony (MP) analyses resulted in a single, fully resolved tree with a length of 53,085, a consistency index of 0.45 (excluding uninformative characters) and a retention index of 0.60 (Fig. 2). Bootstrap analyses indicated that 25 of the 27 nodes were supported by values ≥ 95%. Maximum Likelihood (ML) analysis resulted in a single tree with a ML value of – lnL = 305916.24523 (Fig. 3). The ML and MP trees differed in the relationships among three groups (compare Figs. 2, 3). First, the MP tree placed Amborella alone as the earliest diverging angiosperm lineage and this position was strongly supported with a 100% bootstrap value. In contrast, the ML tree provided weak support (57% bootstrap value) for a sister relationship between Amborella and the Nymphaeales at the base of angiosperms. Second, in the MP tree Calycanthus, the only representative of magnoliids, was positioned sister to eudicots with moderate bootstrap support of 73%. In the ML tree, Calycanthus was weakly supported (52% bootstrap value) as sister to a clade that includes both monocots and eudicots. Third, the monophyly of the eurosid I clade was strongly supported in the MP tree (98% bootstrap value), whereas the ML tree does not support eurosid I monophyly. Both MP and ML analyses provided strong support for the monophyly of eurosid II and for the placement of Citrus (Sapindales) sister to a clade that includes Gossypium (Malvales) and Arabidopsis (Brassicales).

Chloroplast genetic engineering offers several advantages, including a high-level of transgene expression 9, multi-gene engineering in a single transformation event 10, transgene containment via maternal inheritance 11 or cytoplasmic male sterility 12, lack of gene silencing 913, position effect due to site specific transgene integration 14, and lack of pleiotropic effects due to sub-cellular compartmentalization of transgene products 151617. Apart from expressing therapeutic agents 18, biopolymers 19 or transgenes to confer valuable agronomic traits, including herbicide resistance 20, disease resistance 21, insect resistance 22, drought tolerance 16, salt tolerance 23, and phytoremediation 24, chloroplast genetic engineering has been used to study chloroplast biogenesis and function, revealing the mechanisms of DNA replication origins, intron maturases, translation elements and proteolysis, import of proteins, and several other processes 25. Despite the potential of chloroplast genetic engineering, this technology has only recently been extended to the major crops, including soybean 26, carrot 23, lettuce 27, and cotton 28.

The availability of complete sequences of chloroplast genomes enhances their use for genetic engineering. In chloroplast transformation, finding appropriate intergenic spacer regions is very important for efficient integration of transgenes. In tomato and potato, researchers have used trnfM-trnG, rbcL-accD, trnV-3'-rps12, and 16S rRNA-orf 70B intergenic spacer regions of tobacco to integrate transgenes 293031. Unfortunately, none of these regions have 100% sequence identity 6. For example, the intergenic spacer region between rbcL and accD of potato and tobacco shows only 94% sequence identity. Subsequently, potato chloroplast transformants are generated at 10–30 times lower frequencies than tobacco 31. Similarly, the trnfM and trnG intergenic spacer region used for tomato chloroplast transformation has only 82% sequence identity with tobacco, resulting in inefficient transgene integration. There are major deletions in the tomato chloroplast genome in this intergenic spacer region when compared to tobacco, which was used for transformation 6. Therefore, the development of species-specific vectors for transgene integration would enable the use of any of the intergenic spacer regions within the respective chloroplast genomes 6. Moreover, genome organization is different among some species. For instance the rbcL and accD genes are adjacent in tobacco and most other angiosperm chloroplast genomes, including Citrus. However, they are not adjacent in the soybean chloroplast genome because an inversion has altered gene order 32. These examples emphasize the importance of choosing appropriate intergenic spacer regions for chloroplast transformation.

Gene order of the Citrus genome is identical to the published genome sequences of the Solanaceae 6, which have the inferred ancestral angiosperm genome organization 3. The rps19 gene and the first 84 amino acids of rpl22, which generally are single copy in the LSC on the IRb side, have been duplicated in Citrus. Thus, there is a complete, second copy of rps19 and a truncated copy of rpl22 adjacent to trnH. This duplication is likely due to an expansion of IRb at the LSC junction, a common process in chloroplast genomes 33. The gene content of Citrus is also very similar to most other angiosperm chloroplast genomes. However, infA, a gene coding for a translation initiation factor in other plant species, is absent in the Citrus genome, and rpl22 is apparently not functional due to a frame shift mutation. Millen et al. 34 demonstrated at least 24 independent losses of infA in angiosperms, and in four lineages this gene has been shown to be transferred to the nucleus. Three of these losses are evident in our phylogeny based on cpDNA sequences (indicated by bars in Figs. 2, 3). Among the rosid genomes sequenced the infA loss has occurred only once and this change supports the basal split between Vitis and the rest of the rosids (Figs. 2, 3). The rpl22 gene in the IRb region has a nonsense mutation resulting in 9 stop codons indicating that this gene is not functional. This was confirmed by PCR amplification and sequencing using primers that flank the IR/LSC boundaries. The rpl22 gene has been reported to be missing in legume chloroplast genomes and the import of nuclear encoded protein has been demonstrated 3235. Our group recently reported that rpl22 was also missing in the cotton chloroplast genome 36 but it turns out that this was an annotation error. The lack of a functional copy of rpl22 in Citrus should be investigated further, including an expanded sampling of members of the Rutaceae and Sapindales.

Repeat analysis identified 29 direct and inverted repeats 30 bp or longer with a sequence identity ≥ 90% in the Citrus chloroplast genome with the longest repeat, other than the IR, 53 bp in length (Table 1). The presence of dispersed repeats in chloroplast genomes, especially in intergenic spacer regions, has been reported in a number of angiosperm lineages, including other rosids 37.

Phylogenies based on 61 protein-coding genes (Figs. 2, 3) generally agree with several recent studies based on multiple genes or complete chloroplast genomes 373839. Areas of congruence that are strongly supported include the monophyly of monocots and their sister relationship to eudicots, monophyly of rosids and asterids, and the sister relationship between Caryophyllales (represented by Spinacia) and asterids.

Our chloroplast genome trees (Figs. 2, 3) indicate that the earliest diverging angiosperm lineage is either Amborella or Amborella + Nymphaeales. This incongruence between MP and ML trees was noted previously 3739. This same incongruence was observed in a multigene phylogeny that includes nine genes from the chloroplast, mitochondrial and nuclear genomes 40. In this case, phylogenies for chloroplast genes supported the Amborella basal hypothesis, whereas mitochondrial genes supported Amborella + Nymphaeales as the earliest angiosperm lineage.

A second incongruence between MP and ML trees concerns the position of the magnoliid Calycanthus, although bootstrap support for the different relationships is weak (Figs. 2, 3). The MP tree places Calycanthus sister to eudicots, whereas the ML tree positions this taxon sister to a clade that includes both monocots and eudicots. This same incongruence was observed in previous phylogenetic analyses based on the 61 protein-coding chloroplast genes 3739. The position of magnoliids continues to be controversial. Several molecular phylogenies have suggested different sets of relationships among magnoliids, monocots, and eudicots. Phylogenies based on phytochrome 41 and 17 chloroplast 42 genes placed magnoliids sister to monocots + eudicots but bootstrap support was weak. Several studies supported monocots as the sister group of magnoliids + eudicots 434445 but bootstrap support was again weak. Both matK 46 and three gene 38 phylogenies suggested that eudicots are sister to magnoliids + monocots. Finally, the nine-gene phylogeny of Qiu et al. 40 recovered all three of these sets of relationships depending on the phylogenetic methods (MP or ML) and the genes used but support was very weak in each case. The different resolutions of relationships of magnoliids are greatly affected by taxon sampling and phylogenetic methodology. The affects of both of these phenomena have been discussed in several recent papers on the utility of whole chloroplast genomes for phylogenetic reconstruction of angiosperms 3739474849505152. Clearly, additional complete chloroplast genome sequences are needed to resolve the relationships among magnoliids, monocots, and eudicots.

A third incongruence between the MP and ML trees concerns the monophyly of the eurosid I clade (Figs. 2, 3). The MP tree (Fig. 2) strongly supports the monophyly of eurosid I (100% bootstrap), whereas in the ML tree the eurosid I clade in not monophyletic because Cucumis is strongly sister to the Myrtales instead of the Fabales. This same incongruence was detected in Jansen et al. 37 and was attributed to limited taxon sampling and model misspecification in ML analyses, two phenomena that are known to have adverse effects on phylogenetic reconstruction 5354555657. Expanded taxon sampling of rosids is needed to critically evaluate the monophyly of the eurosid I clade, especially since there is only moderate support for monophyly of eurosid I in previous phylogenies based on a single or few genes [reviewed in 58].

Both MP and ML trees are congruent with regard to the phylogenetic placement of Citrus. The genus is positioned as a member of the eurosid II clade, which has very strong bootstrap support in both MP (98%) and ML (100%) trees (Fig. 2). The eurosid II clade, which currently includes the four groups Brassicales, Malvales, Sapindales, and Tapisciaceae, has received strong support in previous DNA sequence phylogenies based on one to three genes 38, although relationships among these groups remain unresolved. Previous phylogenies based on whole chloroplast genomes 36373959 have included only one or two groups (Arabidopsis, Brassicales and/or Gossypium, Malvales). The addition of Citrus from the Sapindales expands the sampling to three of four currently recognized groups of eurosids II. Both MP and ML trees (Figs. 2, 3) provide strong support (98 – 100% bootstrap) for a sister relationship between the Brassicales and Malvales. This same relationship was weakly supported based on phylogenies using one or two chloroplast genes 4660. In contrast, the three gene phylogeny of Soltis et al. 38 weakly supported a sister relationship between the Malvales and Sapindales. Although taxon sampling is still somewhat limited, our 61-gene phylogeny provides very strong support for a close relationship between the Brassicales and Malvales. Expanded taxon sampling of the eurosid II clade is needed to confirm these results.

Citrus sinensis (L.) Osbeck var 'Ridge Pineapple' leaf tissue was chosen as the source plant material because it is being used in the US and international effort to sequence the Citrus genome. The lamellar tissue used was obtained from field-grown mature trees. Chloroplast DNA was isolated as described Jansen et al. 61. Chloroplast DNA was subjected to rolling circle amplification (RCA) using the Repli-g kit following the manufacturers instructions (Molecular Staging Inc, New Haven, CT.).

Purified RCA products were subjected to nebulization, followed by end repair and size-fractionated by agarose gel electrophoresis to obtain fragment lengths ranging from 2.0–3.5 kb. Repaired products were blunt-end cloned into pCR^®-4Blunt-TOPO and then transformed into ElectroMax™ DH5alpha cells by electroporation (TOPO^® shotgun cloning kit, Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA). Transformed cells were selected on LB agar containing 100 μg/μL ampicillin and arrayed into 30 × 96-well microtitre plates. Sequencing reactions were carried out in both the forward and reverse direction using the BigDye^® Terminator v3.1 Cycle sequencing kit and separated by a 3730xL DNA sequence analyzer (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA). Sequence data were assembled using Sequencher v4.5 (GeneCodes Ann Arbor, MI) following quality and vector trimming. Gap regions were filled by sequencing PCR fragments generated from primers designed to flank the gaps. The assembly was considered complete when sequence with confidence scores of ≥ 20 as judged by KB Basecaller software (Applied Biosystems) was accumulated at every base position with at least 4X coverage.

To confirm the IR expansion that results in duplication of the genes rps19 and rpl22, PCR amplicons were generated that overlapped the junction of IRa and IRb with the LSC region. Primer sequences were as follows: rpl22F 5'-CAAAGCCCGCCAGGTAATTG-3' and psbAR 5'-CATTTCTTCCTGGCTGCTTG-3' for the amplicon overlapping IRa and LSC region and rpl22R 5'-GGAGAATTTGCGCCCACTAT-3' and rpsF 5'-CTATCCGTGCAATTCCCTCA-3' for the amplicon overlapping IRb and LSC region. Following PCR, the amplicons were cloned into the pCR^®4-TOPO vector following the manufacturer's instructions (Invitrogen), then sequenced using methods described above.

The Citrus sinensis genome was annotated using DOGMA [Dual Organellar GenoMe Annotator, 62]. Further, searches against a custom database of the previously published chloroplast genomic sequences using BLASTX were used to identify additional putative protein-coding genes. Both tRNAs and rRNAs were identified by searches against the same database using BLASTN.

To determine the repeat structure of the Citrus chloroplast genome, REPuter 63 was used to identify the number and location of direct and inverted (palindromic) repeats using a minimum repeat size of 30 bp and a Hamming distance of 3 (i.e., repfind -f -p -l 30 -h 3 -best 10000).

Positional determination of potential RNA edits was accomplished using 1505 cp sequences from GenBank without chromatographic traces in addition to in-house Citrus sinensis ESTs that contained chromatograms 64. Only regions having a redundancy of at least four ESTs at each position were considered in the analysis. Differences were counted only when a base change was observed in the consensus sequence based on plurality. All assembly comparisons were made with the help of Sequencher v4.5.

Phylogenetic analysis was performed by using PAUP* version 4.10 b10 65. Phylogenetic analyses excluded gap regions to avoid ambiguity in regions where alignment was problematic. All MP searches included 100 random addition replicates and TBR branch swapping with the Multrees option. Modeltest 3.7 66 was used to determine the most appropriate model of DNA sequence evolution for the combined 61-gene dataset. Hierarchical likelihood ratio tests and the Akaike information criterion were used to assess which of the 56 models best fit the data, which was determined to be GTR + G + I by both criteria. For ML analyses we performed an initial parsimony search with 100 random addition sequence replicates and TBR branch swapping, which resulted in a single tree. Model parameters were optimized onto the parsimony tree. We fixed these parameters and performed a ML analysis with three random addition sequence replicates and TBR branch swapping. The resulting ML tree was used to re-optimize model parameters, which then were fixed for another ML search with three random addition sequence replicates and TBR branch swapping. This successive approximation procedure 67 was repeated until the same tree topology and model parameters were recovered in multiple, consecutive iterations. Successive approximation has been shown to perform as well as full-optimization for both empirical and simulated datasets 67. Non-parametric bootstrap analyses 68 were performed for MP analyses with 1000 replicates with TBR branch swapping, 1 random addition replicate, and the Multrees option and for ML analyses with 100 replicates with NNI branch swapping, 1 random addition replicate, and the Multrees option.