Abstract
BackgroundThe plastome of medicinal and endangered species in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Barleria prionitis was sequenced. The plastome was compared with that of seven Acanthoideae species in order to describe the plastome, spot the microsatellite, assess the dissimilarities within the sampled plastomes and to infer their phylogenetic relationships.ResultsThe plastome of B. prionitis was 152,217 bp in length with Guanine-Cytosine and Adenine-Thymine content of 38.3 and 61.7% respectively. It is circular and quadripartite in structure and constitute of a large single copy (LSC, 83, 772 bp), small single copy (SSC, 17, 803 bp) and a pair of inverted repeat (IRa and IRb 25, 321 bp each). 131 genes were identified in the plastome out of which 113 are unique and 18 were repeated in IR region. The genome consists of 4 rRNA, 30 tRNA and 80 protein-coding genes. The analysis of long repeat showed all types of repeats were present in the plastome and palindromic has the highest frequency. A total number of 98 SSR were also identified of which mostly were mononucleotide Adenine-Thymine and are located at the non coding regions. Comparative genomic analysis among the plastomes revealed that the pair of the inverted repeat is more conserved than the single copy region. In addition high variation is observed in the intergenic spacer region than the coding region. The genes, ycf1and ndhF and are located at the border junction of the small single copy region and IRb region of all the plastome. The analysis of sequence divergence in the protein coding genes indicates that the following genes undergo positive selection (atpF, petD, psbZ, rpl20, petB, rpl16, rps16, rpoC, rps7, rpl32 and ycf3). Phylogenetic analysis indicated sister relationship between Ruellieae and Justcieae. In addition, Barleria, Justicia and Ruellia are paraphyletic, suggesting that Justiceae, Ruellieae, Andrographideae and Barlerieae should be treated as tribes.ConclusionsThis study sequenced and assembled the first plastome of the taxon Barleria and reported the basics resources for evolutionary studies of B. prionitis and tools for phylogenetic relationship studies within the core Acanthaceae.
Highlights
The plastome of medicinal and endangered species in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Barleria prionitis was sequenced
Four ribosomal RNA genes (rRNA), seven protein coding and Transfer RNA genes (tRNA) genes are located in the pair of the inverted repeat region of the plastome whereas the large single copy region harbored 62 protein-coding sequence and 22 tRNA genes, the remaining one tRNA and 12 protein coding genes are located in the single copy region
Among the genes coding for protein, many of them started with the codon ATG while few starts with other codon such as ACG and GTG, this is reported in other chloroplast genome of angiosperms
Summary
The plastome of medicinal and endangered species in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Barleria prionitis was sequenced. Presl is among the largest family in the order Lamiales with ca. The family is close to Bignoniaceae family in the Lamiales order [3]. The main centres of distribution of the species in the family are Africa, Central America and Asian continent Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil [4]. They are characterized by having decussate phyllotaxis, while some species have congest whorled phyllotaxis, the leaves are usually simple with toothed margin, opposite, existipulate and contained calcium oxalate crystals or hypodermal calcium carbonate cystolith [5, 6]
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