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Leveraging CyVerse Resources for De Novo Comparative Transcriptomics of Underserved Non-model Organisms
Published on: May 9, 2017
Comparative Transcriptome Analysis Identifies Putative Genes Involved in Steroid Biosynthesis in Euphorbia tirucalli
Weibo Qiao1,2, Changfu Li3, Isidore Mosongo4,5
1CAS Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430074, China. qwb2013@163.com.
Abstract:
Phytochemical analysis of different Euphorbia tirucalli tissues revealed a contrasting tissue-specificity for the biosynthesis of euphol and β-sitosterol, which represent the two pharmaceutically active steroids in E. tirucalli. To uncover the molecular mechanism underlying this tissue-specificity for phytochemicals, a comprehensive E. tirucalli transcriptome derived from its root, stem, leaf and latex was constructed, and a total of 91,619 unigenes were generated with 51.08% being successfully annotated against the non-redundant (Nr) protein database. A comparison of the transcriptome from different tissues discovered members of unigenes in the upstream steps of sterol backbone biosynthesis leading to this tissue-specific sterol biosynthesis. Among them, the putative oxidosqualene cyclase (OSC) encoding genes involved in euphol synthesis were notably identified, and their expressions were significantly up-regulated in the latex. In addition, genome-wide differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the different E. tirucalli tissues were identified. The cluster analysis of those DEGs showed a unique expression pattern in the latex compared with other tissues. The DEGs identified in this study would enrich the insights of sterol biosynthesis and the regulation mechanism of this latex-specificity.
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