Abstract
Here we report the complete nucleotide sequence of the chloroplast genome of Populus alba. This is the first report on angiosperm in terms of tree chloroplast genomes. The genome as a circular DNA is composed of 156,505 bp, in which a pair of 27,660 bp-inverted repeat are contained. The inverted repeat region disrupts the others into the large (85,017 bp) and the small (16,168 bp) single copy regions. The genome contains genes which are identified to have similarity to the chloroplast genes previously reported. Those are 85 potential protein-coding genes, 4 ribosomal RNA genes and 37 tRNA genes. The chloroplast genome of P. alba lacks rpl32 & rps16 though it resembles that of tobacco in overall structure. In addition to the structural organization, the expression pattern of each gene in the chloroplast genome of the P. alba will be discussed. This work was partly supported by METI.
