[Comparison of chloroplast genomes of medicinal plants in Aristolochiaceae]

In this study, the chloroplast genome of Asarum sieboldii f. seoulense was sequenced, analyzed, and compared with chloroplast genomes of other medicinal plants in Aristolochiaceae downloaded from GenBank, aiming to clarify the characteristics of the chloroplast genome of A. sieboldii f. seoulense and the differences in chloroplast genome among medicinal plants of Aristolochiaceae. To be specific, the chloroplast genome of A. sieboldii f. seoulense was sequenced and assembled by high-throughput sequencing, and the general characteristics, repeats, inverted repeat(IR) boundary, and phylogenetic relationship of the chloroplast genomes of 11 medicinal species in Aristolochiaceae were analyzed with REPuter. The result showed that the genome of A. sieboldii f. seoulense was 167 293 bp, with large single-copy(LSC) region of 89 840 bp, small single-copy(SSC) region of 21 415 bp, IR region of 28 019 bp, and GC content of 37.9%. A total of 133 genes were annotated, including 89 protein-coding genes, 36 tRNA genes and 8 rRNA genes. The chloroplast genomes of the 11 medicinal species were 159 308-167 293 bp, with 130-134 genes annotated. Forward(F), reverse(R), complement(C), and palindromic(P) long repeats and simple sequence repeat(SSR) were found in the chloroplast genomes of five species. Among them, A. sieboldii f. seoulense had six types of SSR. In the phylogenetic tree, A. sieboldii f. seoulense and A. heterotropoides were in the same clade. The result is expected to lay a basis for the classification, identification, and phylogeny of medicinal plants in Aristolochiaceae.