Characterization of the complete chloroplast genome of the medicinal herb Veronica polita Fr. 1819 (Lamiales: Plantaginaceae)

Abstract

Veronica polita Fr. 1819 (synonym: Veronica didyma Ten. 1981) is a species of annual herb with high medicinal value. It is originally from Southwest Asia, but has been naturalized widely in many regions of the world. In this study, the complete chloroplast genome of V. polita was determined to be 150,191 bp long with a typical quadripartite structure, comprising two inverted repeat regions (IRa and IRb, 25,465 bp each), a large single-copy (LSC) region (81,847 bp) and a small single-copy (SSC) region (17,414 bp). It encodes a panel of 114 genes (including 79 protein-coding, 31 tRNA, and four rRNA genes) with 18 of them being completely or partially duplicated and 19 of them possessing one or two introns. Phylogenetic analysis supported the tribal-level taxonomy of the family Plantaginaceae, and revealed that V. polita was most closely related to the congener Veronica persica Poir. 1808.

Keywords: Chloroplast genome; Veronica polita Fr. 1819; high-throughput sequencing; medicinal herb; phylogenetic analysis.

Figure 1.

Phylogeny of the family Plantaginaceae based on the Bayesian analysis of the concatenated coding sequences of chloroplast PCGs. The best-fit nucleotide substitution model is ‘GTR + G+I’. The support values next to the nodes were Bayesian posterior probabilities according to the Bayesian analysis. The outgroup taxa included were three species from the family Scrophulariaceae (order Lamiales). Tribal-level taxonomy was presented for each taxon in capital letters.