Perilla is a annual herb plant of the mint family, Laminaceae and mainly cultivated in eastern Asia, i.e. Korea, China and Japan. In response to an increased interest for healthy supplement food from the public, people are focusing on the properties of perilla. The applicable parts of perilla plants are the leaves and seeds. Perilla has been cultivated as a source of unsaturated fatty acid oil. But in spite of advantage of the important nutritional traits the genome or molecular studies on perilla remains largely unknown. Sequence comparisons of chloroplast (cp) genomes or nuclear ribosomal DNA (nrDNA) are of great important to provide a evidence for taxonomic studies or species identification or understanding mechanisms that underlie the evolution of perilla species. So, we tried to study a structural analysis of perilla genome and 45s nrDNA using 9 species (3 Diploid; Perilla B-17, P. hirtella, P. setoyensis / 6 Tetraploid; YCPL 285, YCPL 170, YCPL 205-1, YCPL 181-1, YCPL 177-1, YCPL 207-1). The complete cp genome and nrDNA of 9 perilla species were determined using Illumina sequencing technology and analyzed on the variance in base level between perilla B-17 and salvia miltiorrhiza. Total chloroplast genome size of perilla B-17 as a reference was 152,589 bp in length. We also identified an slightly overlapped intergenic regions between salvia miltiorrhiza and B-17. The results above will contribute to growing of molecular or genome structure and functional genomics of perilla available in studying perilla biology.
For further study, we will look for genetic diversity of perilla species.