Identification of phenylpropanoid biosynthetic genes and phenylpropanoid accumulation by transcriptome analysis of Lycium chinense

Abstract

BackgroundLycium chinense is well known in traditional Chinese herbal medicine for its medicinal value and composition, which have been widely studied for decades. However, further research on Lycium chinense is limited due to the lack of transcriptome and genomic information.ResultsThe transcriptome of L. chinense was constructed by using an Illumina HiSeq 2000 sequencing platform. All 56,526 unigenes with an average length of 611 nt and an N50 equaling 848 nt were generated from 58,192,350 total raw reads after filtering and assembly. Unigenes were assembled by BLAST similarity searches and annotated with Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) orthology identifiers. Using these transcriptome data, the majority of genes that are associated with phenylpropanoid biosynthesis in L. chinense were identified. In addition, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis-related gene expression and compound content in different organs were analyzed. We found that most phenylpropanoid genes were highly expressed in the red fruits, leaves, and flowers. An important phenylpropanoid, chlorogenic acid, was also found to be extremely abundant in leaves.ConclusionsUsing Illumina sequencing technology, we have identified the function of novel homologous genes that regulate metabolic pathways in Lycium chinense.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2164-14-802) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Maize phenylalanine ammonia‐lyases contribute to resistance to Sugarcane mosaic virus infection, most likely through positive regulation of salicylic acid accumulation

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A Combined Comparative Transcriptomic, Metabolomic, and Anatomical Analyses of Two Key Domestication Traits: Pod Dehiscence and Seed Dormancy in Pea (Pisum sp.)

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“…Previously, Zhao et al. () identified 11 genes associated with phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathway using next‐generation sequencing in Lycium chinense . We screened all the genes involved in phenylpropanoid biosynthesis in jute and developed SSR markers for several key genes including PAL , CCoAOMT , C4H, CHI, FLS, F3H and LDOX covering almost all the steps of phenylpropanoid biosynthesis in jute.…”