The nucleotide sequence of the cucumber (
Cucumis sativus L. cv. Baekmibaekdadagi) chloroplast genome was completed (DQ119058). The circular double-stranded DNA, consisting of 155,527 bp,
contained a pair of inverted repeat regions (IRa and IRb) of 25,187 bp each, which were separated by small and large single
copy regions of 86,879 and 18,274 bp, respectively. The presence and relative positions of 113 genes (76 peptide-encoding
genes, 30 tRNA genes, four rRNA genes, and three conserved open reading frames) were identified. The major portion (55.76%)
of the
C. sativus chloroplast genome consisted of gene-coding regions (49.13% protein coding and 6.63% RNA regions; 27.81% LSC, 9.46% SSC and
18.49% IR regions), while intergenic spacers (including 20 introns) made up 44.24%. The overall G-C content of
C. sativus chloroplast genome was 36.95%. Sixteen genes contained one intron, while two genes had two introns. The expansion/contraction
manner of IR at IRb/LSC and IR/SSC border in
Cucumis was similar to that of
Lotus and
Arabidopsis, and the manner at IRa/LSC was similar to
Lotus and
Nicotiana. In total, 56 simple sequence repeats (more than 10 bases) were identified in the
C. sativus chloroplast genome.
Keywords Cucumber (Cucumis sativus) - Chloroplast genome sequence - Fosmid library - Shotgun library
Communicated by I. S. Chung