Characterization of the complete chloroplast genome of Eleutherococcus senticosus (Araliaceae) as an herb in China

Abstract

Eleutherococcus senticosus is a highly valued woody herb medicinal plant belonging to the family Araliaceae, which is also the popular edible plant in China. In this paper, the chloroplast genome of E. senticosus was completed. The complete chloroplast genome of E. senticosus was 156,768 bp in length as a circle. It contained a large single-copy (LSC) region of 86,756 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) region of 18,154 bp and separated by two inverted repeat (IR) regions of 25,929 bp. The base compositions of chloroplast genome is uneven and the overall nucleotide composition is: A (30.7%), T (31.4%), C (19.3%) and G (18.6%), with a total G þ C content (39.4%). It comprised 134 genes, including 89 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 37 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes and 8 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes. 8 PCG genes species, 7 tRNA genes species and 4 rRNA species were found duplicated in the IR regions. The phylogenetic analysis result shown that the chloroplast genome of E. senticosus is closest to Eleutherococcus sessiliflorus of the family Araliaceae in this study by the maximum-likelihood (ML) method. The complete chloroplast genome of E. senticosus can provide more genomics information for further research on the species in China.

New Insights into Phylogenetic Relationship of Hydrocotyle (Araliaceae) Based on Plastid Genomes

“…Furthermore, the ycf15 gene containing premature stop codons was annotated as a pseudogene across the 17 Hydrocotyle plastomes. In some Araliaceae plastomes, however, the ycf15 was intact [23,25,33] or completely lost [26,35], demonstrating that a variation in gene content has occurred during the process of evolution. Although pseudogenes have lost their ability to encode proteins, they are still transcribed and have great significance for regulatory processes [36,37].…”