Sequencing and comparative analysis of chloroplast genomes of three medicinal plants: , and .

Unlabelled: Three species of ( kitag., bunge., and pall.) were the main source for an important traditional Chinese medicine, "Longdan", which was first mentioned in " Shennong materia medica Sutra " 2000 years ago. Until recently, there were very few reports on taxonomic classification of these three traditional medicinal species. In the current study, chloroplast genomes of the three species were sequenced and the phylogenetic analyses were performed in combination with 31 NCBI downloaded species sequences and two species of as outgroup. Based on the phylogenetic results, a new taxonomic classification for was proposed including 4 independent clades with 6 subdivisions (Group 1-Group 6). All the general features, SSR characteristics and gene composition of chloroplast genomes strongly supported such a new classification system for , which could lay a theoretical foundation for in the molecular evolutionary research. Finally, phylogenetic analyisis also demonstrated that the three examined species from could cluster together into one group (Group 6), which was far away from the evolutionary position of the medicinal species, Franch, which was consistent with the traditional classification in traditional medicinal uses and taxonomy.

Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-022-01217-0.