De Novo Sequencing and Assembly Analysis of the Pseudostellaria heterophylla Transcriptome

PLoS One. 2016 Oct 20;11(10):e0164235. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0164235. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

Pseudostellaria heterophylla (Miq.) Pax is a mild tonic herb widely cultivated in the Southern part of China. The tuberous roots of P. heterophylla accumulate high levels of secondary metabolism products of medicinal value such as saponins, flavonoids, and isoquinoline alkaloids. Despite numerous studies on the pharmacological importance and purification of these compounds in P. heterophylla, their biosynthesis is not well understood. In the present study, we used Illumina HiSeq 4000 sequencing platform to sequence the RNA from flowers, leaves, stem, root cortex and xylem tissues of P. heterophylla. We obtained 616,413,316 clean reads that we assembled into 127, 334 unique sequences with an N50 length of 951 bp. Among these unigenes, 53,184 unigenes (41.76%) were annotated in a public database and 39, 795 unigenes were assigned to 356 KEGG pathways; 23,714 unigenes (8.82%) had high homology with the genes from Beta vulgaris. We discovered 32, 095 DEGs in different tissues and performed GO and KEGG enrichment analysis. The most enriched KEGG pathway of secondary metabolism showed up-regulated expression in tuberous roots as compared with the ground parts of P. heterophylla. Moreover, we identified 72 candidate genes involved in triterpenoids saponins biosynthesis in P. heterophylla. The expression profiles of 11 candidate unigenes were analyzed by quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR). Our study established a global transcriptome database of P. heterophylla for gene identification and regulation. We also identified the candidate unigenes involved in triterpenoids saponins biosynthesis. Our results provide an invaluable resource for the secondary metabolites and physiological processes in different tissues of P. heterophylla.

MeSH terms

  • Caryophyllaceae / genetics*
  • Caryophyllaceae / metabolism
  • Flowers / genetics
  • Flowers / metabolism
  • Gene Expression Profiling
  • Gene Library
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
  • Molecular Sequence Annotation
  • Plant Leaves / genetics
  • Plant Leaves / metabolism
  • Plant Proteins / genetics
  • Plant Proteins / metabolism
  • Plant Roots / genetics
  • Plant Roots / metabolism
  • RNA, Plant / chemistry
  • RNA, Plant / isolation & purification
  • RNA, Plant / metabolism
  • Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • Sequence Analysis, RNA
  • Transcriptome*

Substances

  • Plant Proteins
  • RNA, Plant

Grants and funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81460579), the Science and Technology Department of Guizhou Province (QKHSY[2015]3030) and Graduate Student Work Station Project of Guizhou Province (JYSZ [2014]016). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.