The chloroplast genome of Scutellaria franchetiana H.Lév. 1911 and its implications for phylogenetic relationships in the Scutellaria genus.

Scutellaria franchetiana H.Lév. 1911 is an important medicinal plant distributed on hillside wetlands at an altitude of 830-2300 m. The total length of complete chloroplast genome of S. franchetiana 151,852 bp of 38.37% GC content. It is a typical quadratic structure with four subregions consisting of a large single-copy region (83,894 bp), a small single-copy region (17,520 bp), and a pair of inverted repeats (25,219 bp). In the chloroplast genome of S. franchetiana, 130 genes were detected, comprising 86 protein-encoding genes, eight ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, and 36 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes. The comparative analysis of complete chloroplast genome sequences including 68 common genes of 27 plants indicates that S. franchetiana has a close relative relationship with Scutellaria orthocalyx and Scutellaria meehanioides. This work reported the first chloroplast genome of S. franchetiana, which provided a potential reference for studying phylogenetic relationships of the Scutellaria genus.