Abstract:
To explore the codon usage bias and its main influencing factors in the chloroplast genome of
Verbascum plants, the chloroplast genome protein-coding sequences(CDS) of
Verbascum thapsus,
V. phoeniceum and
V. songaricum were downloaded from the NCBI database, and the complete sequence of CDS, excluding duplicates and that less than 300 bp in length, was selected for further analyses using Geneious v.7.1.3 bioinformatics software. Codon W 1.4.2, CUSP and SPSS 26 were used to analyse the effective codon count(ENC), the relative usage of synonymous codons(RSCU), the GC content of bases 1, 2, and 3 of the gene codon(denoted as GC
1, GC
2, and GC
3, respectively) and the average GC content(GC
all). Multivariate statistics from neutral plot analysis, PR2-plot analysis, and ENC-plot analysis were employed to predict the codon usage preference patterns in the chloroplast genomes of 3 species of
Verbascum and to screen the optimal codons. The results showed that the complete chloroplast genomes of the 3 species of
Verbascum had sequence lengths of
153338 bp,
153348 bp, and
153291 bp, respectively, and the ENC values of the protein-coding genes of the 3 species of
Verbascum exceeded 35, indicating that the codon preference of the chloroplast genomes of the 3 species of
Verbascum was weak; and the average GC content at each position of the codon(GC
all) was 38.31%, 38.00%, 38.00%, respectively. In addition, GC
1 (46.83%) > GC
2 (39.63%) > GC
3 (28.49%) in
V. thapsus; similarly, GC
1 (46.12%) > GC
2 (38.40%) > GC
3 (29.50%) in
V. phoeniceum; and GC
1 (46.07%) > GC
2 (38.38%) > GC
3 (29.56%) in
V. songaricum, indicating that the distribution of GC content was not uniform in different locations of different species. In brief, natural selection was the primary factor influencing codon preference in the chloroplast genomes of the 3
Verbascum species. Furthermore, the RSCU and ENC values were used to identify 11, 15, and 11 optimal codons in
V. thapsus,
V. phoeniceum,
V. songaricum, respectively, among which there were 9 common optimal codons, namely AUA, UCC, GCC, AAU, GAU, UGC, UGA, CGU, AGU, and most of codons preference ends with A/U.