RESEARCH ARTICLE Complete chloroplast genome sequence and comparative analysis of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) with related species Sajjad Asaf1, Abdul Latif Khan1, Muhammad Aaqil Khan2, Raheem Shahzad2, Lubna3, Sang Mo Kang2, Ahmed Al-Harrasi1, Ahmed Al-Rawahi1, In-Jung Lee2,4* 1 Chair of Oman's Medicinal Plants & Marine Natural Products, University of Nizwa, Nizwa, Oman, 2 School of Applied Biosciences, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Republic of Korea, 3 Department of Botany, Garden Campus, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Mardan, Pakistan, 4 Research Institute for Dok-do and Ulleung-do Island, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Republic of Korea a1111111111 a1111111111 *
[email protected] a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 Abstract Pinaceae, the largest family of conifers, has a diversified organization of chloroplast (cp) genomes with two typical highly reduced inverted repeats (IRs). In the current study, we determined the complete sequence of the cp genome of an economically and ecologically OPEN ACCESS important conifer tree, the loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.), using Illumina paired-end sequenc- Citation: Asaf S, Khan AL, Khan MA, Shahzad R, ing and compared the sequence with those of other pine species. The results revealed a Lubna , Kang SM, et al. (2018) Complete chloroplast genome sequence and comparative genome size of 121,531 base pairs (bp) containing a pair of 830-bp IR regions, distinguished analysis of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) with by a small single copy (42,258 bp) and large single copy (77,614 bp) region. The chloroplast related species. PLoS ONE 13(3): e0192966. genome of P. taeda encodes 120 genes, comprising 81 protein-coding genes, four ribo- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0192966 somal RNA genes, and 35 tRNA genes, with 151 randomly distributed microsatellites.