State Key Laboratory of Component-based Chinese Medicine, Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Poyang Lake Road 10, Tianjin, 301617, China.
Sci Rep. 2020 Oct 1;10(1):16309. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-73392-7.
Chloroplast genomes have been widely considered an informative and valuable resource for molecular marker development and phylogenetic reconstruction in plant species. This study evaluated the complete chloroplast genomes of the traditional Chinese medicine Gleditsia sinensis and G. japonica, an adulterant of the former. The complete chloroplast genomes of G. sinensis and G. japonica were found to be of sizes 163,175 bp and 162,391 bp, respectively. A total of 111 genes were identified in each chloroplast genome, including 77 coding sequences, 30 tRNA, and 4 rRNA genes. Comparative analysis demonstrated that the chloroplast genomes of these two species were highly conserved in genome size, GC contents, and gene organization. Additionally, nucleotide diversity analysis of the two chloroplast genomes revealed that the two short regions of ycf1b were highly diverse, and could be treated as mini-barcode candidate regions. The mini-barcode of primers ZJ818F-1038R was proven to precisely discriminate between these two species and reflect their biomass ratio accurately. Overall, the findings of our study will shed light on the genetic evolution and guide species identification of G. sinensis and G. japonica.
叶绿体基因组被广泛认为是植物物种分子标记开发和系统发育重建的有价值的信息资源。本研究评估了传统中药皂荚和其掺杂物日本皂荚的完整叶绿体基因组。发现皂荚和日本皂荚的完整叶绿体基因组大小分别为 163175bp 和 162391bp。每个叶绿体基因组中共鉴定出 111 个基因，包括 77 个编码序列、30 个 tRNA 和 4 个 rRNA 基因。比较分析表明，这两个物种的叶绿体基因组在基因组大小、GC 含量和基因组织上高度保守。此外，对这两个叶绿体基因组的核苷酸多样性分析表明，ycf1b 的两个短区域高度多样化，可以作为微型条形码候选区域。证明引物 ZJ818F-1038R 的微型条形码能够精确地区分这两个物种，并准确反映它们的生物量比例。总的来说，本研究的结果将为皂荚和日本皂荚的遗传进化提供启示，并指导其物种鉴定。
