The complete chloroplast genome of Saussurea medusa (Asteraceae), a rare subnival plant in Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Jun Wang; Qian Qian; Rui He; Huixuan Zhang; Jianke Wang; Yanping Hu; Li Wang; Yi Li

doi:10.1080/23802359.2020.1829130

The complete chloroplast genome of Saussurea medusa (Asteraceae), a rare subnival plant in Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Mitochondrial DNA B Resour. 2020 Oct 21;5(3):3581-3582. doi: 10.1080/23802359.2020.1829130.

Authors

Jun Wang^{1

2}, Qian Qian^{1

2}, Rui He^{1

2}, Huixuan Zhang^{1

2}, Jianke Wang³, Yanping Hu¹, Li Wang¹, Yi Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Qinghai Key Laboratory of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Biological Resources, Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining, China.
² College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ Institute of Plateau Ecology, Tibet Agricultural and Animal Husbandry University,, Nyingchi, China.

Abstract

Saussurea medusa Maxim. is a subnival plant of Asteraceae with abundant medicinal and ecological value. Until now, few studies have been conducted on S. medusa, especially in phylogenetic relationships and species identification. The S. medusa cp genome had a typical quadripartite structure with a conserved genome arrangement. It was 152,500 bp in size, consisting of a large single copy (LSC) region of 83,553 bp and a small single copy (SSC) region of 18,545 bp, separated by a pair of inverted repeats (IRs) of 25,201 bp. It contained 113 unique genes, including 80 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 29 tRNA and four rRNA genes. The overall GC content was 37.67%. Moreover, a phylogenetic analysis, based on 48 complete cp genomes using Maximum Likelihood (ML) method, indicated that S. medusa was relatively closed to S. pseudoleucoma and was well-clustered within genus Saussurea.

Keywords: phylogeny; Saussurea medusa; chloroplast genome.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Key R & D and Transformation Project of Qinghai Province, China [2020-SF-144]; the Ecological Conservation and Construction for research and Promotion Project of Qinghai Qilian Mountain, China [2019-Q-1].