Phylogenetic Analysis And Comparison Of Chloroplast Genomes Of Two Species Of Chlorophvtum(Asparagaceae) From Kenva

Chlorophytum Ker-gawl(Asparagaceae)is mainly distributed in tropical regions of Africa and Asia,a few in South America and Australia.As the center of the origin and diversity of plant species of Chlorophytum,Africa has been attracting much attention.Kenya,located in tropics of the eastern Africa,has the most abundant plant resources in East Africa with many endemic species of Chlorophytum.The Chlorophytum is easily confused with Dasystachys,and there are complex taxa.The classification of some species is controversial,and there may be some hidden species diversity.As traditional medicinal plants in Africa,Chlorophytum species also have important ornamental value and ecological restoration function.However,to date,few molecular genomic resources have been reported for this genus.Therefore,there is limited knowledge of phylogenetic studies,and the available chloroplast(cp)genome of Chlorophytum(C.rhizopendulum)does not provide enough information on this genus.In this study,we present genomic resources for Chlorophytum comosum and C gallahatense,which had lengths of 154,248 and 154,154 base pairs(bp),respectively.They had a pair of inverted repeats(IRa and IRb)of 26,114 and 26,254 bp each in size,separating the large single-copy(LSC)region of 84,004 and 83,686 bp from the small single-copy(SSC)region of 18,016 and 17,960 bp in C.comosum and C.gallabatense,respectively.There were 112 distinct genes in each cp genome,which were comprised of 78 protein-coding genes,30 tRNA genes,and four rRNA genesThe comparative analysis with five other selected species displayed a generally high level of sequence resemblance in structural organization,gene content,and arrangement.Additionally,the phylogenetic analysis confirmed the previous phylogeny and produced a phylogenetic tree with similar topology.It showed that the Chlorophytum species(C.comosum,C.gallabatense and C.rhizopendulum)were clustered together in the same clade with a closer relationship than other plants to the Anthericum i-amosum.This research,therefore,presents valuable records for further molecular evolutionary and phylogenetic studies which help to fill the gap in genomic resources and resolve the taxonomic complexes of the genus.