Abstract
Andrographis paniculata (Chinese name: Chuanxinlian) is an annual dicotyledonous medicinal plant widely grown in China and Southeast Asia. The dried plant has a highly acclaimed usage in the traditional Chinese medicine for its antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, and analgesic effects. In order to help delineate the biosynthetic pathways of various secondary metabolites, we report in this study a high-quality reference genome for A. paniculata. With the help of both PacBio single molecule real time sequencing and Illumina sequencing reads for error correction, the A. paniculata genome was assembled into a total size of 284 Mb with a contig N50 size of 5.14 Mb. The contigs were further assembled into 24 pseudo-chromosomes by the Hi-C technique. We also analyzed the gene families (e.g., KSL, and CYP450) whose protein products are essential for synthesizing bioactive compounds in A. paniculata. In conclusion, the high-quality A. paniculata genome assembly builds the foundation for decoding the biosynthetic pathways of various medicinal compounds.
Highlights
During the course of human history, all civilizations have tried to explore various plants for medicinal purposes and they formed unique empirical knowledge about how these herbal plants could be used to treat various diseases
In the A. paniculata genome, according to the KEGG annotation results, we identified 41 putative genes that were involved in the terpenoid backbone biosynthesis (Supplementary Table 10)
We found that some CYTOCHROME P450 (CYP450) genes appeared in a cluster in the contigs of the assembly (Figure 7B)
Summary
During the course of human history, all civilizations have tried to explore various plants for medicinal purposes and they formed unique empirical knowledge about how these herbal plants could be used to treat various diseases. Even though much of this knowledge has gradually given way to modern medicine, WHO found that the popularity of herbal medicines increased in almost all parts of the world in recent years (Fitzsimons, 2013). For this reason, herbal plants raise the enthusiasm from the general public, and remain a rich source for discovering novel drug candidates among the researchers. Genome sequencing is a powerful tool for studying various aspects of physiology and genetics in non-model plants, many of which are traditional herbal plants (Zerikly and Challis, 2009; De Luca et al, 2012; Chae et al, 2014). The high-quality genome assembly of Andrographis paniculata is presented in this manuscript as a continuum of the bigger research project
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