The first complete chloroplast genome of Briggsia chienii W. Y. Chun and its phylogenetic position within Gesneriaceae.

ABSTRACT

Briggsia chienii W. Y. Chun 1946 is an endemic herbaceous perennial species distributed in southern China. In this study, we firstly characterized the complete chloroplast genome sequence of B. chienii and provided new molecular resources for promoting its conservation and taxonomic assignment. Its complete chloroplast genome is 154,082 bp in length and contains the typical quadripartite structure of angiosperm plastome, including two inverted repeat (IR) regions of 25,447 bp, a large single-copy (LSC) region of 85,035 bp, and a small single-copy (SSC) region of 18,153 bp. The plastome contains 114 genes, consisting of 80 protein-coding genes, 30 tRNA gene, and 4 rRNA genes. The overall GC content in the plastome of B. chienii is 37.4%, which is lower than lots of angiosperm plastome. The phylogenetic result indicated that B. chienii exhibited the closest relationship with Oreocharis cotinifolia W. T. Wang 1983, and provided new information for the phylogeny relationship of genus Briggsia.