1. Background
Habenarai (Orchidinae, Orchidoidea, Orchidaceae) is a large genus and has more than 891 species [
1], which dispersed widely across the tropical, subtropical, temperate, and alpine regions in the world [
2,
3]. The genus had great ornamental value, but its tubers also had significant therapeutic properties that could be used to cure diuretics, swelling, waist strength and kidney, treating lumbago, and hernia [
4,
5,
6]. Additionally, people frequently use it to cook meals to cure HIV/AIDs in several regions of Africa [
7]. However, as the variation in the morphology, such as tuber, spurred lip, long column, U-shaped wide anther, long caudide, naked viscidium and free stigma [
2,
8], the new descriptions of
Habenaria species are still going on [
9,
10,
11,
12], and the phylogenetics relationship in the genus is still on controversy [
13,
14,
15].
Plastome occupied the quadripartite structure, which consisted of two inverted repeats (IRa and IRb), a large single-copy (LSC) and small single-copy (SSC) regions [
16,
17]. The size of their genomes ranged from 107kb to 218kb [
17]. Like the nuclear genome, there also existed variations such as deletion, insertion, loss, and single nucleotide mutation in certain regions [
18,
19]. The polymorphism of the chloroplast genome displayed the evolution profiling of the paternal inheritance of the species and could be applied in population genetics, phylogenetics and barcoding for plants [
20]. Due to the polymorphism of plastome, several studies have been performed to resolve taxonomic problems and their phylogenetic relationships with high resolution in Orchidaceae [
19,
21,
22]. These studies could not only provide the information to resolve the taxonomic discrepancies of plant lineages, but also supply in-depth insight into the evolution of the plastomes [
18,
19,
23].
Adaptive evolution reflects the adaptability of the species during the evolution process in which natural selection always acts on genetic variation, genetic recombination, and gene flow [
24,
25]. Therefore, exploring the selection character that species suffer in their evolutionary process is another hot spot in the chloroplast genome analyses. Yang et al (2002) showed that heterogeneity for the plastid
matK and
rbcL genes in different species of the family of mangrove genus [
26]. In recent years, many studies detected positively selected chloroplast genes through checking Ka (non-synonymous substitution) and Ks (synonymous substitutions) [
23,
27,
28].
Habenaria aitchisonii Rchb.f. and
Habenaria tibetica Schltr.ex Limpricht belongs to
Habenaria genus and grew on the QTP or adjacent region [
3,
11], especially the latter, which was the endemic endangered species only distributed in shrub meadow or alpine meadow. Ecological and biogeographical forces have a great impact on the chloroplast genome rate heterogeneity [
26]. In general, substitution rates of cp genomes displayed minimal evolution [
28]. Previous studies discovered that the positive selection could accelerate the Ka value, yet it does not affect the Ks value [
29]. However, there is little known about the evolution and adaptation profiling of
Habenaria species.
In this study, the two Habenaria species (H. aitchisonii and H. tibetica) grown on the QTP were sequenced through the next-generation Illumina platform. Combined with the 40 species of cp genomes of Orchidaceae, we aimed to: (1) compare the cp genome structure of species within the Habenaria genus; (2) construct the phylogeny of Habenaria species in Orchidaceae; (3) investigate selective or adaptive evolution in the cp genomes of Habenaria species.
3. Discussion
Here, we sequenced and assembled
H.aitchisonii and
H.tibetica grown on the QTP (
Figure 1), our result displayed that the chloroplast genomes of two species were very similar in structure and cp genome size. Combined with the published cp genomes [
22,
30], our result also displayed that the species of
Habenaria was 153,682-155,708bp, which is smaller than that of Cypripedium [
30] and larger than that of Vanilla, Cyrtosia, Gastrodia and Epipogium species [
22]. Moreover, the GC content of the nine
Habenaria species ranged from 36.60% to 37.90% (
Table 1), and the average GC content was 36.95%, which was a bit larger than the average GC content of orchid plastomes (36.40%)[
30] and Cypripedium species (31.8%)[
21].GC content might be related to the ancestral feature of monocot genomes[
31], secondly, selection and mating system also could drive GC content and GC3 usage[
32].We suggest that high GC content of
Habenaria species may be related to the mutation from these process.
Gene number and gene order are another evolution characterization of the cp genomes. A previous study reported that the average number of 124 orchid species was 113 genes [
21]. However, our results displayed that most of the species had more than 130 coding-genes except
H. radiata (113 genes) (
Table 1), which also a bit more than Cypripedium (128-130 genes). That may be caused by the more duplication genes. In the two new species, more than 20 genes were duplicated.
Ndh genes were lost or deleted in Cypripedium and other orchid species [
22,
30]. Interestingly, our results displayed that the species of
Habenaria contained all 11
ndh genes (
Table S6).
Ndh genes involved in photosynthesis or plastome stability [
21]. Therefore, the
ndh genes would play important roles in
Habenaria adaptations.
Highly variable regions could be used to design the markers in phylogenetic and biogeographic analysis [
33]. In the study, the highest polymorphism appeared in SSC regions had the highest average Pi value of 0.021857 and
ycf1 displayed the high Pi value (
Figure 6). This result was consistent with the Blumea species [
18]. Except for the conserved IR regions, the LSC regions also displayed high variations (
matK-rps16,
psbK-psbI,
atpA-atpF,
rps2-rpoC2,
ycf4-cemA,
rpl33-rps18, and
rps11-rpl36) (
Figure 6;
Table S3). Which may suggest that this region has the potential for markers. Moreover, 16 genes (
atpF,
matK,
ycf4,
cemA,
psbK,
rps18,
psbI,
rps11,
rpl22,
rps15,
ycf1,
ndhF,
rpl32,
ccsA,
ndhD and
ndhE) were detected with nucleotide diversity more than 0.02 (
Figure 7;
Table S4). Among these loci,
ndhF,
rps15,
ccsA, and
rpl32 have been detected as highly variable regions in different species [
18,
21]. Therefore, the high variation information identified in this study has the potential to be exploited as candidate barcode sequences in the phylogenetic analysis of
Habenaria. Moreover,
233 SSRs and 232 SSRs were identified in the plastome of two new species and more SSRs exited in IGS regions (
Figure 5a;
Table S4a). Among the six types, more than sixty are mononucleotides, the results were in accord with other species [
18,
21]. Moreover, our results identified 27 types of SSR in the nine
Habenaria that is less than that of the Cypripedium [
21]. This may be due to the Cyripedium having larger chloroplast genomes and enlarged IR regions. In Cypripedium, the cp genome expansion is associated with the proliferation of IGS regions [
21]. Therefore, repeat regions in the study may help for population genetics studies of
Habenaria.
Habenaria is a large genus and most species of
Habenaria are terrestrial orchids and nearly cosmopolitan, occurring in the tropical, subtropical, temperate, and alpine regions [
2,
3]. In the ML tree, our results displayed that the
Habenaria is not the monophyletic and the nine species could be divided into five different groups (
Figure 8). Among them, the two new species (
H. aitchisonii and
H. tibetica) clustered together with 100% bootstrap support. Interestingly, the two species were grown on the QTP and showed similar morphological characteristics [
3]. The two species both had two basal subopposite leaves, petals slightly 2-lobed, raceme with flower, lip deeply 3-lobed and spur slightly clavate [
3]. Our results with whole cp genomes also displayed that the two species had close relationship. The results are also supported by the previous studies [
9,
10]. Using the
rbcL+
matK+
ITS, the
Habeniara could be divided into eleven clades and the species from tropical and alpine regions could group into different subclades [
10]. Subclade I most from the tropical region and Subclade II was the alpine species. Our results showed that
H. chejuensis,
H. ciliolaris and
H. dentata were group into another branches (
Figure 8), which may originate in tropical regions [
10]. Although the cp genomes data here still quite limited and couldn’t clarify the phylogenetic relationship in the
Habenaria genus, our results still provide the cue that the cp genomes could solve the phylogenetic inference when more cp genome information obtained in the future.
In the previous study, some chloroplast genes were proved to be the target of natural selections [
23,
26,
27,
28,
34]. Our results showed that there were no genes subjected to natural selection between two alpine species (Ka/Ks<1). However, Both the new species had more than 3 genes had Ka/Ks>1 compared with others. These genes included cemA, petA, rps11,
rpl14,
ycf1,
psbK,
rpl22,
ycf2,
ycf2-2,
psbH, and
ndhⅠ (
Figure 7). To further understand the positive genes in
Habenaria genus, codon model was used in ten genes [
24,
25]. Codon sites with higher posterior were another aspect sign of divergent selective pressure [
24,
25]. The results also displayed that the six genes may be under positive selection significantly (
Table 2;
Table S7). These results suggested that the positive selections had been happened in the species of two alpine species. Besides the genes associated with photosynthesis (petA, psbH), NADH-dehyrogenase subunits(ndhⅠ), self-replication process gene (rps11, rpl22) and ycf1, ycf2 also displayed positive selection. Photosynthesis system and NADH-dehyrogenase contributed light harvest and electron transport to produce ATP, were suffering to positive selection in
Allium [
34]. Here, our results were consistent with their conclusion. Moreover, our results also discovered that genes related to cp ribosome (rpl22 and rpl11) had significant positive selection. This may suggest that protein synthesis play the important roles in two alpine species stress adaptation.
The QTP is the largest and highest plateau in the world and one of the important hotspots of biodiversity [
35]. Orchid species are extremely sensitive to environmental change [
36]. Acharya et al (2011) thought that the precipitation and temperature could affect the abundance and distribution of the orchid species [
37]. Similarly, Hu et al (2022) study displayed that annual precipitation, elevation, and top-soil pH(H
2O) had a large important influence on the distribution of the orchid species in the QTP[
38]. Ka/Ks rations have been widely used to infer evolutionary dynamics and identify adaptive signatures among species. Ka/Ks ratios suggested that positive selection existed in Allioideae species [
32] and Solanaceae species [
19,
23]. Here, our results also showed that positive selection have existed in two alpine
Habenaria species. The precipitation, elevation, and top-soil pH (H
2O) might be the potential environmental factors in the QTP.