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Comparative transcriptome analyses of three medicinal Forsythia species and prediction of candidate genes involved in secondary metabolisms

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Abstract

The three Forsythia species, F. suspensa, F. viridissima and F. koreana, have been used as herbal medicines in China, Japan and Korea for centuries and they are known to be rich sources of numerous pharmaceutical metabolites, forsythin, forsythoside A, arctigenin, rutin and other phenolic compounds. In this study, de novo transcriptome sequencing and assembly was performed on these species. Using leaf and flower tissues of F. suspensa, F. viridissima and F. koreana, 1.28–2.45-Gbp sequences of Illumina based pair-end reads were obtained and assembled into 81,913, 88,491 and 69,458 unigenes, respectively. Classification of the annotated unigenes in gene ontology terms and KEGG pathways was used to compare the transcriptome of three Forsythia species. The expression analysis of orthologous genes across all three species showed the expression in leaf tissues being highly correlated. The candidate genes presumably involved in the biosynthetic pathway of lignans and phenylethanoid glycosides were screened as co-expressed genes. They express highly in the leaves of F. viridissima and F. koreana. Furthermore, the three unigenes annotated as acyltransferase were predicted to be associated with the biosynthesis of acteoside and forsythoside A from the expression pattern and phylogenetic analysis. This study is the first report on comparative transcriptome analyses of medicinally important Forsythia genus and will serve as an important resource to facilitate further studies on biosynthesis and regulation of therapeutic compounds in Forsythia species.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by a research and development grant of the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED; 17ak0101046h0002), and partially by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP16H06454. Special gratitude goes to the MEXT for the academic scholarship. LS is supported by the Japanese Government (MEXT) Scholarship Program. We thank Hiroki Takahashi for providing the computing resources of the Medical Mycology Research Center, Chiba University, Japan. We also thank Sayaka Shinpo, Kazusa DNA Research Institute for technical support in Illumina sequencing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chiba University, Inohana 1-8-1, Chuo-ku, Chiba, 260-8675, Japan

    Luchao Sun, Amit Rai, Megha Rai, Michimi Nakamura, Kazuki Saito & Mami Yamazaki

  2. Tsukuba Division, Research Center for Medicinal Plant Resources, National Institutes of Biomedical Innovation, Health and Nutrition, Hachimandai 1-2, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0843, Japan

    Noriaki Kawano, Kayo Yoshimatsu & Nobuo Kawahara

  3. Kazusa DNA Research Institute, Kazusakamatari 2-6-7, Kisarazu, Chiba, 292-0818, Japan

    Hideyuki Suzuki

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  1. Luchao Sun
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Correspondence to Mami Yamazaki.

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Sun, L., Rai, A., Rai, M. et al. Comparative transcriptome analyses of three medicinal Forsythia species and prediction of candidate genes involved in secondary metabolisms. J Nat Med 72, 867–881 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11418-018-1218-6

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