Summary Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer, reputed as the king of medicinal herbs, has slow growth, long generation time, low seed production and complicated genome structure that hamper its study. Here, we unveil the genomic architecture of tetraploid P. ginseng by de novo genome assembly, representing 2.98 Gbp with 59 352 annotated genes. Resequencing data indicated that diploid Panax species diverged in association with global warming in Southern Asia, and two North American species evolved via two intercontinental migrations. Two whole genome duplications (WGD) occurred in the family Araliaceae (including Panax) after divergence with the Apiaceae, the more recent one contributing to the ability of P. ginseng to overwinter, enabling it to spread broadly through the Northern Hemisphere. Functional and evolutionary analyses suggest that production of pharmacologically important dammarane‐type ginsenosides originated in Panax and are produced largely in shoot tissues and transported to roots; that newly evolved P. ginseng fatty acid desaturases increase freezing tolerance; and that unprecedented retention of chlorophyll a/b binding protein genes enables efficient photosynthesis under low light. A genome‐scale metabolic network provides a holistic view of Panax ginsenoside biosynthesis. This study provides valuable resources for improving medicinal values of ginseng either through genomics‐assisted breeding or metabolic engineering.

No abstract

No abstract

Panax ginseng C. A. Meyer is a perennial herb from the Araliaceae family. Traditionally used as a medicinal plant in Oriental medicine for more than thousand years. Ginsenosides are the major therapeutic components in ginseng roots. Roots of the ginseng plant have more commercial value and based on the age. No genomic data available till now. In this study, transcriptome analysis for hairy root, 14 year root, 4 year root get insight in to ginsenoside pathway and genes responsible for long survival and stress. Totally 6,757 Expressed Sequence Tags (EST) was obtained from cDNA libraries. Clustering of those ESTs returned 1,037 contigs and 3,445 singlets for a total of 4,482 putative unigenes. Use of bioinformatics methods 85% of EST sequence was well annotated towards reeds one dimensional concept. The unique transcripts were functionally classified by using Gene Ontology (GO) hierarchy, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), KEGG orthology and structural domain data from biological database. Isoprenoid and putative ginsenoside pathway genes were discussed. EST dataset provides a wide outlook of the genes expressed in hairy roots, 14 years root and 4 years root. The dataset contains more than 1,365 EST sequences related to plant secondary metabolism and 745 sequences related to stresses. This study will improve the genetic engineering of ginseng plant and ginsenosides rich plant development. One dimensional data will lead to the two and three dimensional data.

No abstract

BackgroundVarious Panax ginseng cultivars exhibit a range of diversity for morphological and physiological traits. However, there are few studies on diversity of metabolic profiles and genetic background to understand the complex metabolic pathway in ginseng.MethodsTo understand the complex metabolic pathway and related genes in ginseng, we tried to conduct integrated analysis of primary metabolite profiles and related gene expression using five ginseng cultivars showing different morphology. We investigated primary metabolite profiles via gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and analyzed transcriptomes by Illumina sequencing using adventitious roots grown under the same conditions to elucidate the differences in metabolism underlying such genetic diversity.ResultsGC-MS analysis revealed that primary metabolite profiling allowed us to classify the five cultivars into three independent groups and the grouping was also explained by eight major primary metabolites as biomarkers. We selected three cultivars (Chunpoong, Cheongsun, and Sunhyang) to represent each group and analyzed their transcriptomes. We inspected 100 unigenes involved in seven primary metabolite biosynthesis pathways and found that 21 unigenes encoding 15 enzymes were differentially expressed among the three cultivars. Integrated analysis of transcriptomes and metabolomes revealed that the ginseng cultivars differ in primary metabolites as well as in the putative genes involved in the complex process of primary metabolic pathways.ConclusionOur data derived from this integrated analysis provide insights into the underlying complexity of genes and metabolites that co-regulate flux through these pathways in ginseng.

No abstract

No abstract