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Abstract

Lycium chinense Mill, an important Chinese herbal medicine, is emphasized as a healthy food and is widely used as a dietary supplement. Here we sequenced and analyzed the complete chloroplast (CP) genome of the L. chinense, which is 155,756 bp in length and with 37.8% GC content. This CP genome consists of a pair of inverted repeat regions (IRa and IRb) of 25,476 bp, separated by a large single-copy region (LSC) and a small singlecopy region (SSC), with length of 86,595 and 18,209 bp, respectively. Annotation results revealed that the L. chinense CP genome contains 114 genes, 16 of which are duplicated genes. Most of the 85 protein-coding genes have a usual ATG start codon, except for 3 genes including rps12, psbL and ndhD. Furthermore, most of the simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are short polyadenine or polythymine repeats that contribute to the high AT content of the chloroplast genome. Revealing of the complete sequences and annotation of the L. chinense chloroplast genome will facilitate phylogenic, population and genetic engineering research investigations involving this particular species.