Chloroplast genome evolution in the Dracunculus clade (Aroideae, Araceae)

Chloroplast (cp) genomes are considered important for the study of lineage-specific molecular evolution, population genetics, and phylogenetics. Our aim here was to elucidate the molecular evolution in cp genomes of species in the Dracunculus clade (Aroideae, Araceae). We report de novo assembled cp genomes for eight species from eight genera and also retrieved cp genomes of four species from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The cp genomes varied in size from 162,424 bp to 176,835 bp. Large Single Copy (LSC) region ranged in size from 87,141 bp to 95,475 bp; Small Single Copy (SSC) from 14,338 bp to 23,981 bp; and Inverted Repeats (IRa and IRb) from 25,131 bp to 32,708 bp. The expansion in inverted repeats led to duplication of ycf1 genes in four species. The genera showed high similarity in gene content and yielded 113 unique genes (79 protein-coding, 4 rRNA, and 30 tRNA genes). Codon usage, amino acid frequency, RNA editing sites, microsatellites repeats, transition and transversion substitutions, and synonymous and non-synonymous substitutions were also similar across the clade. A previous study reported deletion of ycf1, accD, psbE, trnL-CAA, and trnG-GCC genes in four Amorphophallus species. Our study supports conservative structure of cp genomes in the Dracunculus clade including Amorphophallus species and does not support gene deletion mentioned above. We also report suitable polymorphic loci based on comparative analyses of Dracunculus clade species, which could be useful for phylogenetic inference. Overall, the current study broad our knowledge about the molecular evolution of chloroplast genome in aroids.