The nucleotide sequence (56,410 base-pairs) of the large single-copy region of chloroplast DNA from the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha has been determined. The sequence starts from one end (JLA) of the large single-copy region and encompasses genes for 21 tRNAs, six ATPase subunits (atpA, atpB, atpE, atpF, atpH and atpI), two photosystem I polypeptides (psaA and psaB), four photosystem II polypeptides (psbA, psbC, psbD and psbG), five ribosomal proteins (rps2, rps4, rps7, rps'12 and rps14), and three RNA polymerase subunits (rpoB, rpoC1 and rpoC2). In addition, we detected 18 open reading frames ranging from 29 to 2136 amino acid residues long, four of which share significant amino acid sequence homology to those of an Escherichia coli malK protein (designated mbpX), human mitochondrial ND2 (ndh2) and ND3 (ndh3) of a respiratory chain NADH dehydrogenase, or a bacterial antenna protein of a light-harvesting complex (lhcA). Sequence analysis suggests that four tRNA genes and six protein genes might be split by introns; they are trnG(UCC), trnK(UUU), trnL(UAA), trnV(UAC), atpF, ndh2, rpoC1, rps'12, ORF135 and ORF167. In the large single-copy region described here, the gene organization deduced is highly conserved with respect to that of higher plants, but an inversion of some 30,000 base-pairs flanked by trnL(CAA) and trnD(GUC) was seen between the liverwort and tobacco chloroplast genomes.