Genome size estimation of Chinese cultured artemisia annua L

Almost all of antimalarial artemisinin is extracted from the traditional Chinese medicinal plant Artemisia annua L. However, under the condition of insufficient genomic information and unresolved genetic backgrounds, regulatory mechanism of artemisinin biosynthetic pathway has not yet been clear. The genome size of genuine A. annua plants is an especially important and fundamental parameter, which helpful for further insight into genomic studies of artemisinin biosynthesis and improvement. In current study, all those genome sizes of A. annua samples collected with Barcoding identification were evaluated to be 1.38-1.49 Gb by Flow Cytometry (FCM) with Nipponbare as the benchmark calibration standard and soybean and maize as two internal standards individually and simultaneously. The genome estimation of seven A. annua strains came from five China provinces (Shandong, Hunan, Chongqing, Sichuan, and Hainan) with a low coefficient of variation (CV, ≤ 2.96%) wasrelative accurate, 12.87% (220 Mb) less than previous reports about a foreign A. annuaspecies with a single control. It facilitated the schedule of A. annua whole genome sequencing project, optimization of assembly methods and insight into its subsequent genetics and evolution.