The complete chloroplast genome ofAesculus chinensisvar.wilsonii

In this study, we sequenced the complete chloroplast (cp) genome ofAesculus chinensisBunge var.wilsonii(Rehder) Turland & N. H. Xia and compared it with cp genomes of congeneric species. The cp genome ofA. chinensisvar.wilsoniiis a circular molecule, 156,211 bp in length, with typical quadripartite structure. It has one large single copy (LSC) region of 85,211 bp and one small single copy (SSC) region of 18,124 bp that are separated by two inverted repeat regions (IR) of 26,438 bp. The cp genome encodes 133 genes comprising 85 protein-coding genes, 40 tRNA genes, and eight rRNA ribosomal genes. The overall GC content of the cp genome ofA. chinensisvar.wilsoniiis 37.93%. We conducted amaximum likelihood phylogenetic analysis, which revealed thatA. chinensisvar.wilsoniiis sister toA. wangiiand has a close relationship withAcerL. (maples). We expect that the cp genome ofA. chinensisvar.wilsoniiwill be useful for DNA barcoding and species delimitation for this species as well as future studies on the conservation, taxonomy, and evolutionary relationships ofAesculusL.