Abstract
The chloroplast genome structure and gene content are highly conserved among land plants, providing valuable information for the studies of taxonomy and plant evolution. Viburnum odoratissimum is a well-known evergreen shrub widely distributed in Asia. It possesses excellent medicinal properties used as traditional medicine for menstrual, stomach, and kidney cramps. In this study, the complete chloroplast genome (cpDNA) of V. odoratissimum is reported and compared with five close Viburnum species and an outgroup. The cpDNA of V. odoratissimum is 158,744 bp in length and contains 130 genes with 17 genes duplicated in the inverted repeat region. The gene content, gene organization and GC content in V. odoratissimum are highly similar to other Viburnum species. A total of 270 tandem repeats is found in these plastomes, most of which are distributed in intergenic space. Differences in the location of the IR/SC boundaries reflect expansions and contractions of IR regions in all species studied. Phylogenetic analysis based on complete chloroplast genomes and the combination of barcodes indicates a sister relationship between V. odoratissimum and V. brachybotryum. Furthermore, a comparative cpDNA analysis identifies three DNA regions (trnC-petN-psbM, trnH-psbA, ndhC-trnV) containing high divergence among seven studied species that could be used as potential phylogenetic markers in taxonomic studies.
Highlights
The genus Viburnum comprise about 200 species of deciduous shrubs, evergreen and small trees, which are broadly distributed in subtropical and temperate Northern Hemisphere and spread across the mountain regions of South Asia and South America, Mexico, and Columbia [1, 2]
The total GC content is 38.1 %, with the highest content in inverted repeat regions (IRs) regions (43%), followed by an large single-copy (LSC) (36.4%), and an small single-copy (SSC) accounting for 32.1%
All the sequences of protein-coding genes and tRNA genes in the V. odoratissimum cp genome are encoded by 26,278 codons
Summary
The genus Viburnum comprise about 200 species of deciduous shrubs, evergreen and small trees, which are broadly distributed in subtropical and temperate Northern Hemisphere and spread across the mountain regions of South Asia and South America, Mexico, and Columbia [1, 2]. Many species in the genus Viburnum have utilized as the traditional folk in China, Russia and Ukraine for a number of diseases, such as menstruation, hypertension, flu, tuberculosis, renal infection, stomach ache, duodenal ulcers [4,5,6]. These species possessed a considerable number of secondary metabolites: monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes, diterpenes [6], diterpenoids, triterpenoids, iridoids [7, 8], chlorogenic [5], amyrin, lupeol [4], resulting in many biological properties, including antiinflammatory, antibacterial, antioxidant, antitussive activities [5, 9, 10]. Molecular phylogenetic studies based on several chloroplast markers remain a number of issues that can cause misleading evaluation of the
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