Camelina sativa L. is an emerging biofuel crop with potential applications in industry, medicine, cosmetics and human nutrition. The crop is unexploited owing to very limited availability of transcriptome and genomic data. In order to analyse the various metabolic pathways, we performed de novo assembly of the transcriptome on Illumina GAIIX platform with paired end sequencing for obtaining short reads. The sequencing output generated a FastQ file size of 2.97 GB with 10.83 million reads having a maximum read length of 101 nucleotides. The number of contigs generated was 53,854 with maximum and minimum lengths of 10,086 and 200 nucleotides respectively. These trancripts were annotated using BLAST search against the Aracyc, Swiss-Prot, TrEMBL, gene ontology and clusters of orthologous groups (KOG) databases. The genes involved in lipid metabolism were studied and the transcription factors were identified. Sequence similarity studies of Camelina with the other related organisms indicated the close relatedness of Camelina with Arabidopsis. In addition, bioinformatics analysis revealed the presence of a total of 19,379 simple sequence repeats. This is the first report on Camelina sativa L., where the transcriptome of the entire plant, including seedlings, seed, root, leaves and stem was done. Our data established an excellent resource for gene discovery and provide useful information for functional and comparative genomic studies in this promising biofuel crop.

Pongamia pinnata (L.) (Fabaceae) is a promising biofuel tree species which is underexploited in the areas of both fundamental and applied research, due to the lack of information either on transcriptome or genomic data. To investigate the possible metabolic pathways, we performed whole transcriptome analysis of Pongamia through Illumina NextSeq platform and generated 2.8 GB of paired end sequence reads. The de novo assembly of raw reads generated 40,000 contigs and 35,000 transcripts, representing leaf, flower and seed unigenes. Spatial and temporal expression profiles of photoperiod and floral homeotic genes in Pongamia, identified GIGANTEA (GI) - CONSTANS (CO) - FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) as active signal cascade for floral initiation. Four prominent stages of seed development were selected in a high yielding Pongamia accession (TOIL 1) to follow the temporal expression patterns of key fatty acid biosynthetic genes involved in lipid biosynthesis and accumulation. Our results provide insights into an array of molecular events from flowering to seed maturity in Pongamia which will provide substantial basis for modulation of fatty acid composition and enhancing oil yields which should serve as a potential feedstock for biofuel production.

In the present study, we have cloned a gene encoding JcMT2a protein from Jatropha curcas L., a promising biofuel tree species. Full length sequence of JcMT2a gene was isolated using RACE PCR. Heterologous expression of JcMT2a in Escherichia coli and its purification has shown distinct bands corresponding to the GST and GST-fused JcMT2a protein. Significant tolerance was observed in E. coli cells expressing recombinant GST-JcMT2a for zinc, copper and cadmium metals compared to cells expressing GST alone. JcMT2a also restored Cu and Cd tolerance in the metal sensitive yeast mutants. Quantitative real time PCR showed a significant increase in JcMT2a transcripts with Cu and Cd in the leaf compared to root tissue. Our Scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis clearly demonstrates that J. curcas L. could be a potential candidate for phytoremediation to clean heavy metals from the environment, in addition to its non-edible oil seed yields for biodiesel production.

Jatropha curcas L. (Family – Euphorbiaceae) is a perennial tree of special interest due to its potential as a biofuel plant with high carbon sequestration. In this study, physiological investigations coupled with transcriptomics in relation to photosynthesis were evaluated in Jatropha grown under ambient (395 ppm) and elevated (550 ppm) CO2 atmosphere. Morphophysiological analysis revealed that Jatropha sustained enhanced photosynthesis during its growth under elevated CO2 for one year which might be linked to improved CO2 assimilation physiology and enhanced sink activity. We sequenced and analyzed the leaf transcriptome of Jatropha after one year of growth in both conditions using Illumina HiSeq platform. After optimized assembly, a total of 69,581 unigenes were generated. The differential gene expression (DGE) analysis revealed 3013 transcripts differentially regulated in elevated CO2 conditions. The photosynthesis regulatory genes were analysed for temporal expression patterns at four different growth phases which highlighted probable events contributing to enhanced growth and photosynthetic capacity including increased reducing power, starch synthesis and sucrose mobilization under elevated CO2. Overall, our data on physiological and transcriptomic analyses suggest an optimal resource allocation to the available and developing sink organs thereby sustaining improved photosynthetic rates during long-term growth of Jatropha under CO2 enriched environment.

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