Abstract

Coptis teeta is an endemic and endangered medicinal plant from the Eastern Himalaya. It has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as Endangered (EN). The whole chloroplast genome of C. teeta was sequenced based on nextgeneration sequencing (NGS) in present study. The circular chloroplast genome exhibits typical quadripartite regions with 154,280 bp in size, including two inverted repeat (IR, 24,583 bp) regions, one large singe copy region (LSC) and one small singe copy region (SSC) of 87,519 bp and 17,595 bp, respectively. The genome contains 125 genes, including 81 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 36 tRNA genes and 8 rRNA genes. Total GC content of C. teeta is 38.3%, while those of IR regions (43.3%) are higher than LSC (36.7%) and SSC (32.2%) regions. Forty-two forward and twenty-three reverted repeats were detected in cp genome of C. teeta. The genome was rich in SSRs and totally 62 SSRs were visualized. The phylogenetic tree showed that species from the Ranunculaceae formed a monophyletic clade and the intra-family topology was consistent with previous studies. The results strongly supported C. teeta and its congeneric species, C. chinensis, as sister group with 100% bootstrap value.