Cases of paternal inheritance and recombination of mitochondrial DNA in peas (Pisum L.)

Pea has been hitherto considered to have strict maternal inheritance of mitochondria, as most of flowering plants. Using a CAPS marker we detected a case of paternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in the second generation of a cross between a wild and a cultivated representatives of the common pea ( Pisum sativum L.). Heteroplasmy for mitochondrial and plastid DNA was detected in arrays of high throughput sequence reads and confirmed by analysis of CAPS markers in an accession of Pisum fulvum Sm. and probable heteroplasmy for mtDNA marker was detected in an accession of the wild P. sativum subsp, elatius . A case of mtDNA recombination in one of accessions of the same subspecies from Turkey was observed as a ca 13 Kb long insert originating from a distant evolutionary lineage. Thus, three phenomena described in this work, occasional paternal leakage of mitochondria, naturally occurring heteroplasmy and recombination of diverged mitochondrial genomes in pea, elucidated microevolutionary processes which shaped diversity in this important crop.