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Transcriptome exploration for further understanding of the tropane alkaloids biosynthesis in Anisodus acutangulus

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Abstract

Tropane alkaloids (TAs) such as anisodamine, anisodine, hyoscyamine and scopolamine are extensively used in clinical practice as anticholinergic agents. Anisodus acutangulus produces TAs in root tissue, and although several genes involved in scopolamine biosynthesis have been cloned, yet the biosynthetic pathway of TAs remains poorly understood. To further understand TAs biosynthesis mechanism, transcriptome analysis with deep RNA sequencing in A. acutangulus roots was performed in this study; 48 unigenes related to tropane, piperidine and pyridine alkaloid biosynthesis, 145 linked to the distribution of arginine to TAs biosynthesis, and 86 categorized to terpenoid backbone biosynthesis have been identified in pathway enrichment analyses with eukaryotic orthologous groups (KOG) and Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes. Additionally, 82 unigenes annotated as cytochrome P450 family members seemed to be involved in secondary metabolism. Genes encoding littorine mutase/monooxygenase (CYP80F1), diamine oxidase (DAO), alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and aromatic amino acid aminotransferase (ArAT) may also play roles in TAs biosynthetic pathways. Furthermore, over 1,000 unigenes were identified as potential transcription factors of WRKY, AP2/ERF, MYB and bHLH families, which would be helpful to understand transcriptional regulation of secondary metabolite biosynthesis. These data enable novel insights into A. acutangulus transcriptome, updating the knowledge of TAs biosynthetic mechanism at molecular level.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Natural Science Fund (31270007, 31201261; 30900110), New Century Talent Project (NECT-13-0902), Fok Ying-Tong Education Foundation for Young Teachers in the Higher Education Institutions of China (131041), Shanghai Talent Development Fund, Open Funding Project of the State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, Shanghai Education Committee Fund (13ZZ104), Shanghai Young Teacher Training Project. The authors are grateful to Dr. David Zekria of Fudan University who helped to polish the English of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Plant Biotechnology, College of Life and Environment Sciences, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, 200234, People’s Republic of China

    Lijie Cui, Fenfen Huang, Pan Liao & Guoyin Kai

  2. Shanghai Chenshan Plant Science Research Center, Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Dasheng Zhang

  3. Departments of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Yuping Lin

  4. Novel Bioinformatics Co., Ltd, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Jie Zong

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  1. Lijie Cui
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  2. Fenfen Huang
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  3. Dasheng Zhang
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  4. Yuping Lin
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  5. Pan Liao
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  6. Jie Zong
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  7. Guoyin Kai
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guoyin Kai.

Additional information

Communicated by S. Hohmann.

L. Cui and F. Huang are co-first authors.

Unigene sequence data reported are available in the NCBI under the GEO accession numbers GSE62162.

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Cui, L., Huang, F., Zhang, D. et al. Transcriptome exploration for further understanding of the tropane alkaloids biosynthesis in Anisodus acutangulus . Mol Genet Genomics 290, 1367–1377 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-015-1005-y

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