Transcriptome Analysis of Aconitum carmichaelii Identifies Genes Involved in Terpenoid, Alkaloid and Phenylpropanoid Biosynthesis

摘要

In this study, RNA sequencing of six Aconitum carmichaelii organs was performed using the Illumina HiSeq 2500 high-throughput platform. The de novo assembly yielded 103,338 unigenes, a total of 19,807 unigenes were annotated and 12,061 were assigned to 129 specific metabolic pathways by KEGG. Importantly, 382 unigenes were identified as being involved in the biosynthesis of phenylpropanoids (183 unigenes), alkaloids (42 unigenes) and terpenoids (158 unigenes). Then a comprehensive skeleton of the terpenoid-alkaloids secondary metabolism of A. carmichaelii was generated. Subsequently, the expression of many secondary metabolism genes was verified via the QRT-PCR method, which further demonstrated that these important genes participating in the three main secondary metabolites of A. carmichaelii. This study produced the first transcriptomic dataset and provided a comprehensive pathway network for the terpenoid-alkaloids secondary metabolites of A. carmichaelii plants, allowing us to efficiently identify candidate genes involved in the biosynthetic pathways of phenylpropanoids, alkaloids and especially AC, HA and MA. The results also provided a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms responsible for the quality of this medicinal material.