The inversion distance between the chloroplast DNAs of Marchantia polymorpha (mp) and Nicotiana tabacum (nt) is 7. To illustrate the sequence of gene order changes, the genomes are represented in a condensed form as following: gene 19-->1 is renamed as gene 1 gene -20-->-54 is renamed as gene 2 gene 55 is renamed gene 3 gene -56-->-72 is renamed gene 4 gene -73-->-74 is renamed gene 5 gene 75-->-81 is renamed gene 6 gene 82 is renamed gene 7 gene 83-->-86 is renamed gene 8. So the dataset becomes: mp 3 -5 -1 2 4 6 8 -7 nt 1 2 -3 4 5 6 7 8 These two genomes can be divided into two parts, i.e., gene 1-5 corresponding to LSC, gene 6-8 corresponding to IR-SSC. They two parts can be viewed as independent to each other. : 1. To translate (6 8 -7) into (6 7 8), there are two ways, each requiring two inversions flip 8 in mp, then flip (-8 -7), i.e. (6 8 -7) -->(6 -8 -7) -->(6 7 8) alternatively, flip (8 -7) in mp, then flip -8. (6 8 -7) -->(6 7 -8) -->(6 7 8) 2. There are many choices to translate (3 -5 -1 2 4) into (1 2 -3 4 5), The total number of possible ways is around 1000. One of the possible scenarios is: (3 -5 -1 2 4) --> (3 -5 1 2 4) --> (3 -5 -2 -1 4) --> (3 -5 -4 1 2) --> (3 -2 -1 4 5) --> (1 2 3 4 5) The total sequences are any combination of the above two parts: 2 steps + 5 steps = 7 total inversion steps to transform the gene orders between the Marchantia and Nicotiana chloroplast genomes.