Characterization of the chloroplast genome of Eucommia ulmoides, a traditional Chinese medicine plant in China

Abstract

Eucommia ulmoides is an important traditional medicinal plant and as a common herb for orthopedic treatment in China. In this study, we reported and analyzed the complete chloroplast genome of E. ulmoides. The chloroplast genome length of E. ulmoides was 163,586 bp in size that has the typical quadripartite structure. It contained a large single-copy (LSC) region of 86,773 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) region of 14,167 bp and separated by two inverted repeat (IRa and IRb) regions of 31,323 bp. The overall GC content of the circular genome was 38.4% while A of 30.8% (50,496 bp), T of 30.8% (50,414 bp), C of 19.2% (31,341 bp), G of 19.2% (31,335 bp). In the chloroplast genome, 135 genes had been found, which included 89 protein-coding (PC) genes, 38 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes and 8 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes. Phylogenetic relationship analysis shown that Eucommia ulmoides was clustered with Aucuba japonica in the evolutionary relationship by the Maximum-Likelihood (ML) method.