The complete chloroplast genome of Saussurea medusa (Asteraceae), a rare subnival plant in Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Saussurea medusa Maxim. is a subnival plant of Asteraceae with abundant medicinal and ecological value. Until now, few studies have been conducted on S. medusa, especially in phylogenetic relationships and species identification. The S. medusa cp genome had a typical quadripartite structure with a conserved genome arrangement. It was 152,500 bp in size, consisting of a large single copy (LSC) region of 83,553 bp and a small single copy (SSC) region of 18,545 bp, separated by a pair of inverted repeats (IRs) of 25,201 bp. It contained 113 unique genes, including 80 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 29 tRNA and four rRNA genes. The overall GC content was 37.67%. Moreover, a phylogenetic analysis, based on 48 complete cp genomes using Maximum Likelihood (ML) method, indicated that S. medusa was relatively closed to S. pseudoleucoma and was well-clustered within genus Saussurea.