Abstract
Qat (Catha edulis, Celastraceae) is a woody evergreen species with great economic and cultural importance. It is cultivated for its stimulant alkaloids cathine and cathinone in East Africa and southwest Arabia. However, genome information, especially DNA sequence resources, for C. edulis are limited, hindering studies regarding interspecific and intraspecific relationships. Herein, the complete chloroplast (cp) genome of Catha edulis is reported. This genome is 157,960 bp in length with 37% GC content and is structurally arranged into two 26,577 bp inverted repeats and two single-copy areas. The size of the small single-copy and the large single-copy regions were 18,491 bp and 86,315 bp, respectively. The C. edulis cp genome consists of 129 coding genes including 37 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, 8 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, and 84 protein coding genes. For those genes, 112 are single copy genes and 17 genes are duplicated in two inverted regions with seven tRNAs, four rRNAs, and six protein coding genes. The phylogenetic relationships resolved from the cp genome of qat and 32 other species confirms the monophyly of Celastraceae. The cp genomes of C. edulis, Euonymus japonicus and seven Celastraceae species lack the rps16 intron, which indicates an intron loss took place among an ancestor of this family. The cp genome of C. edulis provides a highly valuable genetic resource for further phylogenomic research, barcoding and cp transformation in Celastraceae.
Highlights
Qat (Celastraceae: Catha edulis (Vahl) Forssk. ex Endl.) is a woody evergreen species of major cultural and economic importance in southwest Arabia and East Africa, which is cultivated for its stimulant alkaloids cathine and cathinone
The C. edulis cp genome was completely assembled into a single molecule of 157,960 bp, by combining Illumina and Sanger sequencing results
The cp genome of C. edulis consisted of 129 coding regions made up of 37 transfer RNA (tRNA), 84 protein-coding genes, and eight ribosomal RNA (rRNA), of which 112 genes are unique and 17 genes were repeated in two inverted regions consisting of seven tRNAs, six protein coding genes, and four rRNAs (Figure 1 and Table 3)
Summary
Qat (Celastraceae: Catha edulis (Vahl) Forssk. ex Endl.) is a woody evergreen species of major cultural and economic importance in southwest Arabia and East Africa, which is cultivated for its stimulant alkaloids cathine and cathinone. Phylogeographic work using SSR (as simple sequence repeats) loci has been done for wild and cultivated qat in the historic areas of production—Ethiopia, Kenya, and Yemen [7,11]. Beyond these studies, no genetic resources of which we are aware have been developed for qat. The completed cp genome is a valuable resource for studying evolution and population genetics of both wild and cultivated populations of qat as well as genetic transformations related to the production of pharmaceuticals in qat or related Celastraceae species
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