Assembly and characterization of the complete mitochondrial genome of Ventilago leiocarpa

Key message We reported the mitochondrial genome of Ventilago leiocarpa for the first time. Two and one sites lead to the generation of stop and stat codon through editing were verified. Ventilago leiocarpa , a member of the Rhamnaceae family, is frequently utilized in traditional medicine due to the medicinal properties of its roots. In this study, we successfully assembled the mitogenome of V. leiocarpa using both BGI short reads and Nanopore long reads. This mitogenome has a total length of 331,839 bp. The annotated results showed 36 unique protein-coding, 16 tRNA and 3 rRNA genes in this mitogenome. Furthermore, we confirmed the presence of a branched structure through the utilization of long reads mapping, PCR amplification, and Sanger sequencing. Specifically, the ctg1 can form a single circular molecule or combine with ctg4 to form a linear molecule. Likewise, ctg2 can form a single circular molecule or can be connected to ctg4 to form a linear molecule. Subsequently, through a comparative analysis of the mitogenome and cpgenome sequences, we identified ten mitochondrial plastid sequences (MTPTs), including two complete protein-coding genes and five complete tRNA genes. The existence of MTPTs was verified by long reads. Colinear analysis showed that the mitogenomes of Rosales were highly divergent in structure. Finally, we identified 545 RNA editing sites involving 36 protein-coding genes by Deepred-mt. To validate our findings, we conducted PCR amplification and Sanger sequencing, which confirmed the generation of stop codons in atp 9-223 and rps 10-391, as well as the generation of a start codon in nad 4L-2. This project reported the complex structure and RNA editing event of the V. Leiocarpa mitogenome, which will provide valuable information for the study of mitochondrial gene expression.