Abstract
Artemisia argyi is an important medicinal plant widely utilized for moxibustion heat therapy in China. The terpenoid biosynthesis process in A. argyi is speculated to play a key role in conferring its medicinal value. However, the molecular mechanism underlying terpenoid biosynthesis remains unclear, in part because the reference genome of A. argyi is unavailable. Moreover, the full-length transcriptome of A. argyi has not yet been sequenced. Therefore, in this study, de novo transcriptome sequencing of A. argyi's root, stem, and leaf tissues was performed to obtain those candidate genes related to terpenoid biosynthesis, by combining the PacBio single-molecule real-time (SMRT) and Illumina sequencing NGS platforms. And more than 55.4 Gb of sequencing data and 108,846 full-length reads (non-chimeric) were generated by the Illumina and PacBio platform, respectively. Then, 53,043 consensus isoforms were clustered and used to represent 36,820 non-redundant transcripts, of which 34,839 (94.62%) were annotated in public databases. In the comparison sets of leaves vs roots, and leaves vs stems, 13,850 (7,566 up-regulated, 6,284 down-regulated) and 9,502 (5,284 up-regulated, 4,218 down-regulated) differentially expressed transcripts (DETs) were obtained, respectively. Specifically, the expression profile and KEGG functional enrichment analysis of these DETs indicated that they were significantly enriched in the biosynthesis of amino acids, carotenoids, diterpenoids and flavonoids, as well as the metabolism processes of glycine, serine and threonine. Moreover, multiple genes encoding significant enzymes or transcription factors related to diterpenoid biosynthesis were highly expressed in the A. argyi leaves. Additionally, several transcription factor families, such as RLK-Pelle_LRR-L-1 and RLK-Pelle_DLSV, were also identified. In conclusion, this study offers a valuable resource for transcriptome information, and provides a functional genomic foundation for further research on molecular mechanisms underlying the medicinal use of A. argyi leaves.
Highlights
The genus Artemisia argyi Lev. et Vant. (A. argyi) consists of ∼350–500 species and is the largest in the family Asteraceae (Bora and Sharma, 2011)
The mRNAs of these root, stem and leaf samples were first subjected to the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 platform for PE 150-bp sequencing; this yielded a total of 55.4 Gb clean reads, as each sample produced more than 6 Gb after the quality filtering process
Total 139,309 Reads of Insert (ROI) were successfully extracted in the single-molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing with 45 passes and mean length of 2,441 bp, including 108,846 full-length ROIs (78.13%)
Summary
The genus Artemisia argyi Lev. et Vant. (A. argyi) consists of ∼350–500 species and is the largest in the family Asteraceae (Bora and Sharma, 2011). Many of them are used as forage for animals, food, ornamental plants, or soil stabilizers in different geographical regions (Abad et al, 2012; Alok et al, 2016); in China, 17 species of Artemisia could be used for mugwort (Du et al, 2021). Several of these plant species have a broad range of therapeutic functions linked to their high content of essential oils and terpenoids; these include antibacterial, anti-malarial, cough relief, anti-cancer, anti-diabetes, and anti-diarrhea properties, as well as enhancing immunity (Meng et al, 2018; Jiang et al, 2019; Qadir et al, 2019). Artemisinin is a sesquiterpene lactone drugs with antimalaria properties and it is widely used against malaria (Duffy and Mutabingwa, 2006; Gaur et al, 2014)
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