Species Identification of Using the Complete Chloroplast Genome as a Super-Barcode.

The taxonomy and nomenclature of plants are much disputed, particularly for several species in Asia. However, neither morphological features nor common DNA regions are ideal for identification of spp. Meanwhile, although multiple spp. are sources of the rare traditional medicine dragon's blood, the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China has defined as the only source plant. The inaccurate identification of spp. will inevitably affect the clinical efficacy of dragon's blood. It is therefore important to find a better method to distinguish these species. Here, we report the complete chloroplast (CP) genomes of six spp., , , , , , and , obtained through high-throughput Illumina sequencing. These CP genomes exhibited typical circular tetramerous structure, and their sizes ranged from 155,055 () to 155,449 bp (). The GC content of each CP genome was 37.5%. Furthermore, each CP genome contained 130 genes, including 84 protein-coding genes, 38 tRNA genes, and 8 rRNA genes. There were no potential coding or non-coding regions to distinguish these six species, but the maximum likelihood tree of the six spp. and other related species revealed that the whole CP genome can be used as a super-barcode to identify these spp. This study provides not only invaluable data for species identification and safe medical application of but also an important reference and foundation for species identification and phylogeny of Liliaceae plants.