Identification and analysis of genes associated with the synthesis of bioactive constituents in Dendrobium officinale using RNA-Seq

Abstract

Dendrobium officinale L. is an important traditional herb with high commercial value in China. Several bioactive constituents, including polysaccharides and alkaloids, reportedly make major contributions toward the excellent medicinal effect of D. officinale. In this study, the contents of polysaccharides and alkaloids in various organs of D. officinale were measured and compared. We took advantage of transcriptomes from four organs to explore biological mechanisms in the organ-specific distribution of active ingredients in D. officinale. Based on Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathways, unigenes related to the enzymes involved in fructose and mannose metabolism and unigenes associated with putative upstream elements of the alkaloid biosynthetic pathway were identified. A large number of candidates, including 35 full-length glycosyltransferase genes and 49 full-length P450 genes, were also identified based on the transcriptome data, and the organ-specific expression pattern of these genes was determined. Furthermore, differential expression of all candidate genes was analyzed in two Dendrobium species, D. nobile L. and D. officinale. The data will supply important clues to exploit useful genes involved in polysaccharide and alkaloid synthesis.

The Effects of Ecological Factors on the Main Medicinal Components of Dendrobium officinale under Different Cultivation Modes

“…The most obvious difference is the polysaccharide and total flavonoid in the wild cultivation mode, which are significantly higher than the other two. Other studies also show that these two contents are higher, indicating that the quality of wild D. officinale grown under natural conditions is much better than artificial cultivation [34,35]. However, due to our large market demand and scarce wild resources, we cannot obtain these wild D. officinale in large quantities.…”

Transcriptome Analysis Reveals Biosynthesis of Important Bioactive Constituents and Mechanism of Stem Formation of Dendrobium huoshanense

“…They transfer sugar moieties from activated donors to specific acceptors to form glycosidic bonds which is a key downstream step for polysaccharide biosynthesis 23 . A series of key enzymes have been identified in the related reports 20,31 . In the study, we also found similar glycosyltransferases genes, including glucosyltransferases, mannosyltransferases, xylosyltransferases and www.nature.com/scientificreports www.nature.com/scientificreports/ galactosyltransferases.…”

Peer Review #1 of "Comparative transcriptomic analyses of powdery mildew resistant and susceptible cultivated cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) varieties to identify the genes involved in the resistance to Sphaerotheca fuliginea infection (v0.1)"

“…Next-generation sequencing is a cost-efficient way to analyze transcriptomic variations under different treatment conditions (Shen et al, 2017;Yu et al, 2017). In 2012, expression profiling of P. cubensis-infected cucumber identified differential expressed genes (DEGs) during the infection process from 1 to 8 d post inoculation (Adhikari et al, 2012).…”