A comparative study of genomic adaptations to low nitrogen availability in Genlisea aurea

Abstract Genlisea aurea is a carnivorous plant that grows on nitrogen-poor waterlogged sandstone plateaus and is thought to have evolved carnivory as an adaptation to very low nitrogen levels in its habitat. The carnivorous plant is also unusual for having one of the smallest genomes among flowering plants. Genomic DNA is known to have a high nitrogen content and yet, to the author’s knowledge, no published study has linked nitrogen starvation of G. aurea with genome size reduction. This comparative study of the carnivorous plant G. aurea , the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana (Brassicaceae) and the nitrogen fixing Trifolium pratense (Fabaceae) attempts to investigate whether the genome, transcriptome and proteome of G. aurea showed evidence of adaptations to low nitrogen availability. It was found that although G. aurea ’s genome, CDS and non-coding DNA were much lower in nitrogen than the genome of T. pratense and A. thaliana this was solely due to the length of the genome, CDS and non-coding sequences rather than the composition of these sequences.