Magnolia zenii is a critically endangered species known from only 18 trees that survive on Baohua Mountain in Jiangsu province, China. Little information is available regarding its molecular biology, with no genomic study performed on M. zenii until now. We determined the complete plastid genome of M. zenii and identified microsatellites. Whole sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis using BI and ML methods were also conducted. The plastome of M. zenii was 160,048 bp long with 39.2% GC content and included a pair of inverted repeats (IRs) of 26,596 bp that separated a large single-copy (LSC) region of 88,098 bp and a small single-copy (SSC) region of 18,757 bp. One hundred thirty genes were identified, of which 79 were protein-coding genes, 37 were transfer RNAs, and eight were ribosomal RNAs. Thirty seven simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were also identified. Comparative analyses of genome structure and sequence data of closely-related species revealed five mutation hotspots, useful for future phylogenetic research. Magnolia zenii was placed as sister to M. biondii with strong support in all analyses. Overall, this study providing M. zenii genomic resources will be beneficial for the evolutionary study and phylogenetic reconstruction of Magnoliaceae.

Plant functional traits represent adaptive strategies to the environment, linked to biophysical and biogeochemical processes and ecosystem functioning. Compilations of trait data facilitate research in multiple fields from plant ecology through to land-surface modelling. Here we present version 2 of the China Plant Trait Database, which contains information on morphometric, physical, chemical, photosynthetic and hydraulic traits from 1529 unique species in 140 sites spanning a diversity of vegetation types. Version 2 has five improvements compared to the previous version: (1) new data from a 4-km elevation transect on the edge of Tibetan Plateau, including alpine vegetation types not sampled previously; (2) inclusion of traits related to hydraulic processes, including specific sapwood conductance, the area ratio of sapwood to leaf, wood density and turgor loss point; (3) inclusion of information on soil properties to complement the existing data on climate and vegetation (4) assessments and flagging the reliability of individual trait measurements; and (5) inclusion of standardized templates for systematical field sampling and measurements.

Cerasus serrulatais a flowering cherry germplasm resource for ornamental purposes. In this work, we present a de novo chromosome-scale genome assembly ofC. serrulataby the use of Nanopore and Hi-C sequencing technologies. The assembledC. serrulatagenome is 265.40 Mb across 304 contigs and 67 scaffolds, with a contig N50 of 1.56 Mb and a scaffold N50 of 31.12 Mb. It contains 29,094 coding genes, 27,611 (94.90%) of which are annotated in at least one functional database. Synteny analysis indicated thatC. serrulataandC. aviumhave 333 syntenic blocks composed of 14,072 genes. Blocks on chromosome 01 ofC. serrulataare distributed on all chromosomes ofC. avium, implying that chromosome 01 is the most ancient or active of the chromosomes. The comparative genomic analysis confirmed thatC. serrulatahas 740 expanded gene families, 1031 contracted gene families, and 228 rapidly evolving gene families. By the use of 656 single-copy orthologs, a phylogenetic tree composed of 10 species was constructed. The presentC. serrulataspecies diverged fromPrunus yedoensis~17.34 million years ago (Mya), while the divergence ofC. serrulataandC. aviumwas estimated to have occurred ∼21.44 Mya. In addition, a total of 148 MADS-box family gene members were identified inC. serrulata, accompanying the loss of the AGL32 subfamily and the expansion of the SVP subfamily. The MYB and WRKY gene families comprising 372 and 66 genes could be divided into seven and eight subfamilies inC. serrulata, respectively, based on clustering analysis. Nine hundred forty-one plant disease-resistance genes (R-genes) were detected by searchingC. serrulatawithin the PRGdb. This research provides high-quality genomic information aboutC. serrulataas well as insights into the evolutionary history ofCerasusspecies.