Balanophora genome

As a fungal-like holoparasite, plants in Balanophoraceae exhibited extreme changes in morphology and functions, for example, they have tuber as the only vegetative organ, lack roots, leaves, axillary buds, and stomata (Kuijt and Dong 1990, Kuijt and Hansen 2015); the flower structures were also reductive (Kuijt and Hansen 2015); in some genus, they use a unique parasites-host interference system, the roots of host could be induced by the parasites to produce procambial strands into the tuber tissue, which produced chimera apical meristem and chimera vascular tissue named as composite bundle, which may be more accessible for parasites to get nutrition and other metabolites they required (Hsiao, Mauseth et al. 1995). Comparativegenomic investigation of Balanophoraceae could address the genome and gene modifications when these extreme morphology and physiology changes occurred for parasitic lifestyle adaption.