Characteristic and phylogenetic analyses of chloroplast genome for Ephedra monosperma (Ephedraceae), an important medicinal species

Yan-Ling Zhao; Yong-Jun Fan; Yan-Ci Yang

doi:10.1080/23802359.2021.1872440

Characteristic and phylogenetic analyses of chloroplast genome for Ephedra monosperma (Ephedraceae), an important medicinal species

Mitochondrial DNA B Resour. 2021 Feb 9;6(2):483-484. doi: 10.1080/23802359.2021.1872440.

Authors

Yan-Ling Zhao¹, Yong-Jun Fan¹, Yan-Ci Yang¹

Affiliation

¹ School of Biological Science and Technology, Baotou Teachers' College, Baotou, China.

Abstract

Ephedra monosperma is an important medicinal plant of Ephedra (Ephedraceae). The complete chloroplast genome of E. monosperma was assembled from Illumina pair-end sequence reads. The whole chloroplast (cp) genome is 109,548 bp in length and presents a quadripartite structure consisting of two copies of inverted repeat (IR) regions (20,398) separated by a large single copy (LSC) region (60,674 bp) and a small single copy (SSC) region (8078 bp). The cp genome of E. monosperma encodes a total of 118 genes, including 73 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes and 8 rRNA genes. The overall GC content of E. monosperma cp genome is 36.6%. A maximum likelihood (ML) phylogenetic analysis revealed that E. monosperma was close to Ephedra equisetina. The ML tree also showed Ephedraceae appeared more closely related to Gnetaceae than to the other families in Gymnospermae.

Keywords: Ephedra monosperma; chloroplast genome; phylogenetic analysis.

Grants and funding

This research was financially supported by the Science-Technology Plan of Inner Mongolia under Grant number 2019GG002; the Science-Technology Support Program for Youths of Higher Education Institutions of Inner Mongolia under Grant number NJYT-18-A21; the Scientific Research Project of Higher Education Institutions of Inner Mongolia under Grant number NJZZ20360; and the Initial Scientific Research Fund of Baotou Teachers’ College under Grant number BTTCRCQD2018-01.