New plastome from an introduced Salvia yunnanensis C.H.Wright (Lamiaceae) challenges previous phylogenetic...

Salvia yunnanensis C.H. Wright 1896, a species in the Lamiaceae family, is a medicinal plant whose roots are used as herbal medicine under the name "Zidanshen." To provide useful genetic information on this plant, in this study, we assembled another complete plastome of a successfully introduced S. yunnanensis using a combination of next-generation sequencing (NGS) and third-generation sequencing (TGS) data. The plastome is 151,486 bp and comprises a large single-copy (LSC) region of 82,759 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) region of 17,577 bp, and a pair of inverted repeat (IR) regions of 25,575 bp each. It encodes 132 genes, which include 87 protein-coding genes, eight rRNA genes, and 37 tRNA genes. The guanine-cytosine (GC) content of the genome is 38.01%. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that S. yunnanensis was closely related to S. honania. Genome assembly benefits from the strengths of NGS and TGS data, resulting in high-quality assembly. It showed 99.53% similarity to the previously reported plastome (MN341012), with a slight increase in length. However, the gene count and GC content remained unchanged. Phylogenetic analysis of whole plastomes revealed that S. yunnanensis in this study formed a monophyletic clade distinct from Salvia honania but did not group with any publicly available S. yunnanensis plants. This newly sequenced plastome provides a valuable resource for the introduction and domestication of this plant resource in the future.