1. Introduction
The family Magnoliaceae encompass a group of plants that are highly valued for their ornamental qualities. The family involves about 300 species and ranges across tropical and temperate areas, mainly in Southeast Asia, North South America Central America, Southeast North America, including Mexico and Antilles[
1,
2]. In terms of classification, dividing Magnoliaceae into 2 subfamilies or 2 tribes, Liriodendroideae (or Liriodendreae) and Magnolioideae (or Magnolieae), has been widely accepted[
3,
4,
5]. Within the subfamily Liriodendroideae, there is no dispute that it contains only the single genus,
Liriodendron Linnaeus. Currently, all research indicates that the classification controversies within the family Magnoliaceae are mainly focused on the delimitation and classification of genera within the subfamily Magnolioideae. The number of genera within the family Magnolioideae has been divided into 16 by Xia[
6], 15 by Law[
4], 14 by Sima and Lu[
7], 11 by Dandy[
3], 16 by Wu
et al. [
10], or even just one by Figlar and Nooteboom[
8]. Many scholars[
9] prefer the treatment of segregated or smaller genera in the family Magnoliaceae. As they said, the main reason is that the treatment of the bigger genera cannot represent the later evolution process and levels in this family, and that the bigger genera are too inclusive to reflect the evolutional trends and the migratory routes mainly on the basis of morpho-geographical studies. The Sima & Lu’s Magnoliaceae system[
7,
10], established in 2012 based on DNA data and morphological characteristics, especially observations on living plants, consists of 14 monophyletic genera in their delimitation of the subfamily Magnolioideae, which has been strongly supported by an increasing number of DNA data analysis results and gradually accepted by many scholars[
11,
12,
13,
14].
The genus
Lirianthe Spach s. l. in the Sima and Lu’s system is placed in
Magnolia subgenus
Magnolia section
Gwillimia Candolle s. l. in the Figlar and Nooteboom’s system[
15], it is a monophyletic group[
7,
10] and includes about 25 species mainly distributed from East Himalaya through South China to Southeast Asia[
16]. There are about 12 species of this genus in China, of which 5 are endemic to China[
16,
17]. But this genus
Lirianthe Spach s. s. in the Xia’s system excludes those species with the circumscissile mature carpels such as
L. hodgsonii (J. D. Hooker & Thomson) Sima & S. G. Lu and so on. Plants of the genus
Lirianthe have very important practical value and are world-renowned ornamental plants, industrial timber sources, medicinal materials and fragrance source species[
18,
19].
L. henryi (Dunn) N. H. Xia & C. Y. Wu,
L. coco (Loureiro) N. H. Xia & C. Y. Wu,
L. delavayi (Franchet) N. H. Xia & C. Y. Wu and
L. odoratissima (Y. W. Law & R. Z. Zhou) N. H. Xia & C. Y. Wu have large and fragrant flowers, making them popular choices for garden ornamentals. Additionally, their lush green foliage makes them ideal for greening up outdoor space.
L. phanerophlebia (B. L. Chen) Sima is only known from Hekou, Jinping and Maguan in the south-east of Yunnan province. Based on the results of the Global Trees Campaign field surveys in December 2005, it is estimated that the total wild population is less than 200 individuals. The biggest threat to the species is a decrease in habitat, with many suitable areas now replaced by banana plantation. Local awareness-raising is vital for this species, as well as research into nursery techniques for its cultivation.
L. henryi is a national second-level key protected wild plant from Yunnan province. It has been listed as an endangered plant by the international union for conservation of nature (IUCN).
L. confusa Sima & W. N. Sima and
L. brevisericea Sima & Hong Yu are two newly described species.
Earlier phylogenetics of Magnoliaceae plants based on DNA analysis employed one to several nuclear or chloroplast DNA regions[
20,
21,
22], but a recent systematic and phylogenetic study based on complete chloroplast genome (CPG) sequences of 9 species of
Lirianthe demonstrated that these 9 species of
Lirianthe form a monophyletic branch[
23]. This study shows the value of chloroplast genomic data for systematics or species classification research, but did not include
L. henryi,
L. phanerophlebia,
L. confusa and
L. brevisericea. Here, complete chloroplast genomes were sequenced and assembled for them. Our goal was to 1) elucidate genomic structure, gene content and genetic variability encoded in
Lirianthe chloroplast DNA; 2) conduct an initial chloroplast phylogenomic analysis in the family Magnoliaceae, with an emphasis of the genus
Lirianthe. Chloroplast sequence datasets established herein facilitate improved phylogenetic resolution and evolutionary inferences for these under-surveyed Asian endemics and their underexplored
Lirianthe relatives.
3. Discussion
The chloroplast genome is a superior option to the nuclear genome for studying nucleotide diversity and reconstructing the phylogeny of related species due to its complexity, smaller genome size, lower nucleotide substitution rate, uniparental inheritance, and haploid characteristics[
25]. The development of next-generation sequencing technology and bioinformatics analysis methods has significantly reduced the cost of obtaining genome sequences. Therefore, chloroplast genome-scale data are increasingly used to conduct. As a result, inferring evolutionary relationships at higher taxonomic levels[
26], even at the interspecific or intraspecific level in some species, such as ginseng authentication by 18 species-specific markers [
27], authentication of ginseng cultivars by 17 polymorphic sites [
28], differentiation of hazelnut cultivars by a combination markers of 2 InDels and 1 SNP[
29], markers were mostly developed from whole chloroplast genomes in these studies. The chloroplast genome assembly and annotation, as well as comparative analysis, are the basis and prerequisite for the above work.
We had previously completed the assembly and annotation of chloroplasts of
L. hodgsonii [
23] and
L. coco [
30]. Here, we newly assembled the chloroplast genomes of six other
Lirianthe species. The CPGs of these plants were found to possess a similar size and structure, all demonstrating a typical quadripartite pattern. There is a known connection between the phylogenetic position and the total GC content. Early differentiated lineages, like those found in the Magnoliaceae, have a greater GC content [
31]. Compared to the median GC content of 35% in most angiosperms,
Houpoea plants have a higher GC content of around 39.2%[
32], which is almost identical to the GC content of 39.3% in the
Lirianthe species in this study. The GC content in the IR region of all
Lirianthe species is notably high (43.2%), aligning increasingly conducted using chloroplast genome-scale data, with similar findings in other plants like
Carthamus (43.2%)[
33] and
Cypripedium (42.7%)[
34], potentially due to the inclusion of four highly conserved rRNA genes with high GC content (
Figure 1).
SSR markers have been widely used in population genetics research due to their reliability and high variability. In this study, a small amount of SSR markers were detected, with about 170 in
Houpoea species[
32] and 246 in
Bougainvillea spectabilis[
35], while our findings indicated only 42~49 SSRs. The primary explanation is the use of different search parameters, as
Carthamus species can only recognize 36-40 SSRs [
33] when same parameters (1-10 2-6 3-5 4-5 5-5 6-5) are applied. The expansion and contraction of IR regions at the junctions of LSC and SSC have significant impacts, including the creation of pseudogenes and alterations in genome size and evolutionary rate[
36]. The absence of substantial progress made even at lower taxonomic levels. Species identification, detection of structural changes in IR boundaries in this study suggests that Magnoliaceae may have remained relatively primitive and conservative nature.
The analysis of CPG DNA polymorphism is a proven approach to detect mutation hotspots, which can function as distinct DNA barcodes. Two of the 10 genes or DNA segments with the highest, assessment of nucleotide diversity detected in this study,
rpl32-trnL and
petA-psbJ, are also present in the genus
Houpoea [
32], which also belongs to the Magnoliaceae family. The
trnH-psbA is one of the early recommended plant DNA barcodes [
37] and was also the second most polymorphic fragment in this study. The
rpl32-trnL,
petA-psbJ and
trnH-psbA are good candidate barcodes for
Lirianthe species based on the results of comparative analysis of DNA polymorphisms. These potentially highly variable chloroplast barcodes will greatly enhance our ability to identify and protect rare and endangered species within the genus
Lirianthe, resolution of phylogenetic relationships, and reconstruction of evolutionary history have become feasible through comparison of chloroplast genomes and phylogenetic analysis.
The genus
Lirianthe Spach s. s. is one of the genera re-instated by Xia and Wu for
Magnolia section
Gwillimia Candolle s. s. when several genera were recognized in the family Magnoliaceae. It has been accepted in many recent publications from China and Vietnam [
38]. CPG has proved to be a powerful tool in unraveling the evolutionary associations among land plants[
26,
39,
40]. Based on the Sima and Lu’s system[
7], 15 species of the genus
Lirianthe s. l. and 29 species of other genera of Magnoliaceae were selected, and a phylogenetic tree was drawn using ML method with chloroplast whole genome sequences (
Figure 5). Among them, plants of the genus
Lirianthe gather together, to form an independent branch. All 15 species of the genus
Lirianthe had been classified in the genus
Lirianthe in Sima and Lu’ system, also simultaneously in the section
Gwillimia of the genus
Magnolia in the Figlar and Nooteboom’s system [
8] and formed into a monophyletic taxon, but which had been classified in the two different genera,
Talauma and
Lirianthe, in the Xia’s system[
6] and this implied that Xia’s
Talauma is a polyphyletic taxon. Furthermore, the 15
Lirianthe species show a crossover mixed pattern in Xia's system, the four species marked with green shading demonstrate the results of this cross-mixing classification in
Figure 5. The processing results of
Lirianthe plants indicate that the plant range of
Lirianthe defined by the Sima & Lu’s system or
Magnolia section
Gwillimia by Figlar & Nooteboom’s system is reasonable and scientific, and chloroplast genome evidence supports these taxonomic treatments.
However, as these mentioned in the introduction, there are too many generic delimitation problems within the tribe Magnolieae or the subfamily Magnolioideae. In 2004, Figlar & Nooteboom, based on the latest available data on DNA and morphology, degraded the tribe Magnolieae or the subfamily Magnolioideae into the genus
Magnolia Linnaeus, reduced all of its former segregated genera to
Magnolia and reconstructed a complex infrageneric system of this biggest genus
Magnolia s.l. in the family Magnoliaceae, including 3 subgenera, 12 sections and 13 subsections. It sounds that this treatment had solved the generic delimitation problems within the tribe Magnolieae or the subfamily Magnolioideae. In essence, this just changed the problems from generic delimitation to infrageneric delimitation and the delimitation problems are still unsolved. In order to unravel the generic delimitation problems above better, Xia [
6] and Sima & Lu [
7] published a new system for the family Magnoliaceae respectively in 2012. A total of 17 genera are recognized in Xia’s system [
6] and a total of 15 genera are recognized in Sima and Lu’s system[
7]. The system by Sima and Lu, based on the data on DNA and the observations of morphological characters especially in living plants, was strongly supported by recent DNA work later [
21,
23,
30,
32,
41] and was accepted by many scholars[
11,
12,
13,
14]. In order to better reflect the evolutionary steps and levels of Magnoliaceous plants, as well as the evolutionary trends and migration routes based primarily on morphological-geographical studies, it is a more feasible and useful approach to define smaller independent genera. Overall, the results of this study can provide valuable sequence information for the molecular systematics of
Lirianthe in Magnoliaceae and offer a theoretical basis for the utilization and conservation of
Lirianthe germplasm resources.