Swertia mussotii Franch. has been widely used in Tibetan folk medicine as an important drug ingredient for the treatment of hepatitis and hepatobiliary disease and for homeopathic purposes. But the lacking natural resources of S. mussotii is becoming more obvious with increasing market demands. The main objective of this work was to examine genetic differentiation among S. mussotii populations from different geographical locations and use the knowledge gained to facilitate future selection of the species suitable for large-scale cultivation to meet the increasing demand for medicinal use of this plant. In this study, 68 S. mussotii Franch samples collected from Zhongda (16), Chengduo (16), and Xiewu (8) County in Qinghai Province, Xiaojin (14) and Jinchuan (14) County in Sichuan Province, China and 4 samples from related species, were genotyped using genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) technique. GBS scored 4095 SNPs with a minor-allele frequency > 0.25 and an average read depth < 200 based on the 72 samples examined. Analyses of all SNPs provided evidence of genetic differentiation among populations. Structural and phylogenetic topological analyses supported the genetic differentiations among populations. Gene ontology annotation results revealed that genetic differentiations often occurred in genes known or hypothesized to be involved in various metabolic processes such as catalytic and transferase activity, cellular component, nucleus, biological, cellular and metabolic process. The present results also revealed a significant positive correlation between the genetic similarity and geographical distance (P = 0.032). Moreover, the adaptability of S. mussotii to the environment had a strong effect on its chemical composition and phenotypic changes. Therefore, we hypothesize that the population structure is strongly influenced by local adaptive pressure. The adaptive evolution of S. mussotii species in heterogeneous environments may play an important role in inducing genetic differentiation among different geographical populations. This is evidenced by the observed changes in phenotypic traits and chemical compounds in S. mussotii plants from different geographic locations.

Swertia mussotii Franch。在藏族民间医学中已被广泛用作治疗肝炎和肝胆疾病以及顺势疗法的重要药物成分。但是，随着市场需求的增加，小葡萄球菌缺乏自然资源变得更加明显。这项工作的主要目的是研究不同地理位置的Mussotii种群之间的遗传分化，并利用所获得的知识来促进将来适合大规模种植的物种的选择，以满足对该植物药用的日益增长的需求。在这项研究中，有68个mussotii使用基因分型对从青海省中大（16），成都市（16）和谢武（8）县，小金（14）和金川（14）县收集的弗兰克样本以及相关物种的4个样本进行基因分型。排序（GBS）技术。GBS根据检查的72个样本对4095个SNP进行了评分，其次等位基因频率> 0.25，平均读取深度<200。所有SNP的分析提供了人群之间遗传分化的证据。结构和系统发育拓扑分析支持人群之间的遗传分化。基因本体论注释结果表明，遗传分化通常发生在已知或假设与各种代谢过程有关的基因中，例如催化和转移酶活性，细胞成分，细胞核，生物学，细胞和代谢过程。目前的结果还表明，遗传相似性与地理距离之间存在显着正相关（P  = 0.032）。此外，穆氏葡萄球菌对环境的适应性对其化学成分和表型变化具有强烈影响。因此，我们假设人口结构受到局部适应压力的强烈影响。mussotii物种在异质环境中的适应性进化可能在诱导不同地理种群之间的遗传分化中起重要作用。观察到的来自不同地理位置的Mussotii植株的表型性状和化合物的变化证明了这一点。