Complete Arabis alpina chloroplast genome sequence and insight into its polymorphism

The alpine plant Arabis alpina (alpine rock-cress) is a thoroughly studied species in the fields of perennial plant flowering regulation, phylogeography, and adaptation to harsh alpine climatic conditions. We report the complete A. alpina chloroplast genome sequence obtained through de novo assembly of Illumina paired-end reads produced by total DNA sequencing. The A. alpina cp circular genome is 152,866 bp in length and built of two inverted repeats of 26,933 bp separated by unique regions: a large single copy of 82,338 bp and a small single copy of 17,938 bp. The genome contains 131 genes, some of them being duplicated in the inverted repeats. Seventy-nine unique protein-coding genes were annotated, together with 29 tRNA genes and 4 ribosomal RNA genes. Sequencing and mapping of 23 additional A. alpina DNA samples enabled to gain insight into the intraspecies polymorphism of the sequenced cp genome. Genetic variability among genomes was detected as 44 indels, most of them being located in noncoding regions, and 130 single-nucleotide polymorphisms, 37 of them corresponding to mutations in coding regions. A. alpina chloroplast genome sequence will be helpful in population studies or investigations of chloroplast functions of this alpine plant species.