Chloroplast Genome Sequence and Phylogenetic Analysis of Medicinal Plant Pinellia ternata

Abstract

Pinellia ternata, as one of the traditional Chinese medicines, has a significant effect on eliminating dampness, stopping vomiting and calm the adverse-rising energy. There are few researches on the structural characteristics of the chloroplast genome of P. ternata, which is not conducive to its further development. Therefore, we studied the chloroplast genome sequence of P. ternata to provide scientific basis for the development of P. ternata and phylogenetic analysis of Araceae. We fabricate the complete chloroplast genomes of P. ternata using Illumina (HiSeq X) sequencing technology. The chloroplast genome of P. ternata has the same gene order and organization as the chloroplast genomes of other Araceae. The P. ternata complete chloroplast genomes is 163 711 bp in length, exhibits a conserved quadripartite structure with a large single-copy (LSC; 92 562 bp) region, and a small single-copy (SSC; 23 805 bp) region interspersed between inverted repeat (IRa/IRb; 25 474 bp) region. A total of 128 unique genes were annotated, including 83 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA, and 8 rRNA. 143 SSR loci were retrieved from the genome, with mononucleotide is the most frequently distributed type, and hexanucleotides are the rarest type. In addition, 50 long repeats sequences were found in tandem repeats. We made phylogenetic trees from 18 Araceae species and 2 Caldesia species using ML method. This study provides a valuable reference for the systematic location and chloroplast genome information of Pinellia ternata in Araceae.