Peculiarities of the inverted repeats in the complete chloroplast genome of Strobilanthes bantonensis Lindau

Wuwei Wu; Jingling Li; Yu Liu; Mei Jiang; Mingsheng Lan; Chang Liu

doi:10.1080/23802359.2021.1911699

Peculiarities of the inverted repeats in the complete chloroplast genome of Strobilanthes bantonensis Lindau

Mitochondrial DNA B Resour. 2021 Apr 22;6(4):1440-1447. doi: 10.1080/23802359.2021.1911699.

Authors

Wuwei Wu¹, Jingling Li², Yu Liu¹, Mei Jiang³, Mingsheng Lan¹, Chang Liu³

Affiliations

¹ Guangxi Botanical Garden of Medicinal Plants, Nanning, China.
² College of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Bioactive Substances and Resource Utilization of Chinese Herbal Medicine from the Ministry of Education, Institute of Medicinal Plant Development, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Strobilanthes bantonensis Lindau belongs to the family Acanthaceae. It is an antiviral herb that can be used to prevent Influenza virus infections in the border areas between China and Vietnam. Local people call it 'Purple Ban-lan-gen' because its root is very similar to that of Strobilanthes cusia (Nees) Kuntze, which is called 'Southern Ban-lan-gen' and is listed in Chinese Pharmacopeia. The two species have been used interchangeably locally. However, their pharmacological equivalence has caused concern for years. We have sequenced the chloroplast genome of S. cusia previously. In this study, we sequenced the complete chloroplast genome sequence of S. bantonensis to preform in-depth comparative genetic analysis of the two Strobilanthes species. The chloroplast genome of S. bantonensis is a circular DNA molecule with a total length of 144,591 bp and encodes 84 protein-coding, 8 ribosomes, and 37 transfer RNA genes. The chloroplast genome has a conservative quadripartite structure, including a large single-copy (LSC) region, a small single-copy (SSC) region, and a pair of inverted repeat (IR) regions, with lengths of 92,068 bp, 17,767 bp, and 17,378 bp, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis confirmed that S. bantonensis is closely related to the S. cusia. Compared with other species from Acanthaceae, S. bantonensis has a significantly shortened IR region, suggesting the occurrence of IR contraction events. This study will help future taxonomic, evolutionary, phylogenetic, and bioprospecting studies of the sizeable Strobilanthes genus, which contains over 400 species.

Keywords: Ban-lan-gen; Strobilanthes bantonensis Lindau; chloroplast genome; phylogenetic analysis.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Guangxi Science and Technology Program [AD17292003], Guangxi R&D Project of Medical and Health Technology [S201529], National Science & Technology Fundamental Resources Investigation Program of China [2018FY100705], and The National Mega-Project for Innovative Drugs of China [2019ZX09735-002]. The funders were not involved in the study design, data collection, and analysis, decision to publish, or manuscript preparation. We also thank Prof. Yunfei Deng for the help of taxonomy identification of S. bantonensis.