Comparison among the chloroplast genomes of five species of Chamaerhodos (Rosaceae: Potentilleae): phylogenetic implications

Chamaerhodos is a small genus with ca 7–8 species with a disjunct distribution in Asia and western North America. Due to limited sampling of species and genes in previous studies, little is known about the phylogenetic relationships among the species. Moreover, chloroplast genomic resources for Chamaerhodos have been limited. Herein, we conducted a comparative analysis of the complete chloroplast (cp) genomes of five Chamaerhodos species. The five cp genomes had a typical quadripartite structure with high conservation of gene content and gene order. These five cp genomes encoded an identical set of 129 genes, including 84 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes and eight rRNA genes. Comparison of the boundaries between the IRs and single copy regions revealed only very slight boundary differences and the five cp genomes showed only little sequence divergence. Seven regions (trnR-UCU-atpA, trnS-GCU- trnG-UCC, TrnG-GCC-trnfM-CAU, trnL-UAA intron, trnH-GUG-psbA, trnF-GAA- ndhJ, matK-5′-trnK-UU...