Rafflesia (Rafflesiaceae, Malpighiales) is a genus of plants producing the world’s largest flowers (Fig. 1), yet it is a holoparasite with no stems, roots or leaves, deriving all nutrients solely from its host vine, the genus Tetrastigma (Vitaceae; Nais 2001; Davis et al. 2007). Ironically, the gian...

Rafflesia is a holoparasitic plant that depends solely on its host for its nutrients, given that during the early stage of its life, this parasite lives inside the host vine. The lack of host specificity and preference information for Rafflesia can largely be attributed to the absence of a comprehen...

Rafflesia are obligate endo-holoparasitic plants with the genus Tetrastigma playing an important role as their host plants. Rafflesia arnoldii is one of Indonesian endemic plants that grows in Sumatra island. This island is also known to have eleven species of Tetrastigma. Three of them are known as...

Background Recent studies have shown that plant genomes have potentially undergone rampant horizontal gene transfer (HGT). In plant parasitic systems HGT appears to be facilitated by the intimate physical association between the parasite and its host. HGT in these systems has been invoked when a DN...