Chloroplast Genome Analysis of The Famous Chinese Herbal Medicine Yizhiren (Zingiberaceae)

Abstract Background: Yizhiren is the fruit of Alpinia oxyphylla(Zingiberaceae) ,a well-known Chinese herbal medicine from China. The complete chloroplast genome of Alpinia oxyphylla was studied in this paper, which laid the foundation of the further study of genetic information and data of Alpinia oxyphylla.Methods: The complete chloroplast sequences of 19 the family Zingiberaceae species were aligned using MEGAX software.The phylogenetic tree was constructed by the Maximum-Likelihood method and edited by the Evolview online.Results: The chloroplast gene group is a typical tetragonal structure, which is formed by 161,351 base pairs. Each genome has a large single-copy region (LSC) of 87,248 bp, a small single-copy region (SSC) of 16,175 bp and a pair of inverted-repeat regions (IRs) of 28,964 bp in each. The complete nucleotide composition of chloroplast genome is: 31.5% A, 32.4% T, 18.2% C, 17.9% G, and the total GC content is 36.2%. Among them 28 exons and 15 introns. A total of 137 genes were annotated, which included 92 protein coding genes (PCGs), 37 metastatic RNA (tRNAs) and 8 ribosomal RNA (rRNAs).Conclusions: The phylogenetic ML tree shown the conclusion that Alpinia oxyphylla is closely related to Alpinia chinensis on genetic position relationship. This result is of great value to the study of biological inheritance, species identification and medicinal value. Meanwhile, it provides references for the study of biological inheritance, species identification and medicinal value.