Abstract
Datura stramonium is a widely used poisonous plant with great medicinal and economic value. Its chloroplast (cp) genome is 155,871 bp in length with a typical quadripartite structure of the large (LSC, 86,302 bp) and small (SSC, 18,367 bp) single-copy regions, separated by a pair of inverted repeats (IRs, 25,601 bp). The genome contains 113 unique genes, including 80 protein-coding genes, 29 tRNAs and four rRNAs. A total of 11 forward, 9 palindromic and 13 tandem repeats were detected in the D. stramonium cp genome. Most simple sequence repeats (SSR) are AT-rich and are less abundant in coding regions than in non-coding regions. Both SSRs and GC content were unevenly distributed in the entire cp genome. All preferred synonymous codons were found to use A/T ending codons. The difference in GC contents of entire genomes and of the three-codon positions suggests that the D. stramonium cp genome might possess different genomic organization, in part due to different mutational pressures. The five most divergent coding regions and four non-coding regions (trnH-psbA, rps4-trnS, ndhD-ccsA, and ndhI-ndhG) were identified using whole plastome alignment, which can be used to develop molecular markers for phylogenetics and barcoding studies within the Solanaceae. Phylogenetic analysis based on 68 protein-coding genes supported Datura as a sister to Solanum. This study provides valuable information for phylogenetic and cp genetic engineering studies of this poisonous and medicinal plant.
Highlights
Scopolamine is an important tropane alkaloid from Solanaceae plants widely used as anticholinergic agent that acts on the parasympathetic nervous system [1]
We found that the GC content was unevenly distributed in the entire cp genome of D. stramonium and the divergence of conserved nature between IR and single copy (SC) regions might be partly due to the different GC content
Results in this study showed that the synonymous codons usage was not at the same frequencies and the patterns of synonymous codon usage varied significantly among genes, which were consistent with previous investigations [54]
Summary
Scopolamine is an important tropane alkaloid from Solanaceae plants widely used as anticholinergic agent that acts on the parasympathetic nervous system [1]. It is widely used as sedative in clinical practice including preanesthetic medication for general anesthesia, and for manic psychosis, motion sickness, parkinsonism and organophosphorus pesticide poisoning [2,3]. Scopolamine exhibited great potential as a drug for use in withdrawal for heroin addicts [6]. It was recently reported that the maximum concentrations were found in the stems and leaves of juvenile plants [3,7]. Significant attention has been paid to its commercial production using biotechnologies
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