The complete chloroplast genome of Diarthron linifolium (Thymelaeaceae), a species found on a limestone outcrop in eastern Asia

Diarthron linifolium Turcz. is an annual herb usually found in sandy soil or limestone areas. Plants in the genus Diarthron are known to have toxic chemicals that may, however, be potentially useful as an anticancer treatment. Diarthron linifolium is a unique species among the species of the genus distributed in Korea. Here, we determine the genetic variation of D. linifolium collected in Korea with a full chloroplast genome and investigate its evolutionary status by means of a phylogenetic analysis. The chloroplast genome of Korean D. linifolium has a total length of 172,644 bp with four subregions; 86,158 bp of large single copy and 2,858 bp of small single copy (SSC) regions are separated by 41,814 bp of inverted repeat (IR) regions. We found that the SSC region of D. linifolium is considerably short but that IRs are relatively long in comparison with other chloroplast genomes. Various simple sequence repeats were identified, and our nucleotide diversity analysis suggested potential marker regions near ndhF. The phylogenetic analysis indicated that D. linifolium from Korea is a sister to the group of Daphne species.