Abstract
Gardenia jasminoides is used in traditional Chinese medicine and has drawn attention as a rich source of crocin, a compound with reported activity against various cancers, depression and cardiovascular disease. However, genetic information on the crocin biosynthetic pathway of G. jasminoides is scarce. In this study, we performed a transcriptome analysis of the leaves, green fruits, and red fruits of G. jasminoides to identify and predict the genes that encode key enzymes responsible for crocin production, compared with Crocus sativus. Twenty-seven putative pathway genes were specifically expressed in the fruits, consistent with the distribution of crocin in G. jasminoides. Twenty-four of these genes were reported for the first time, and a novel CCD4a gene was predicted that encodes carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase leading to crocin synthesis, in contrast to CCD2 of C. sativus. In addition, 6 other candidate genes (ALDH12, ALDH14, UGT94U1, UGT86D1, UGT71H4, and UGT85K18) were predicted to be involved in crocin biosynthesis following phylogenetic analysis and different gene expression profiles. Identifying the genes that encode key enzymes should help elucidate the crocin biosynthesis pathway.
Highlights
Crocin has received considerable attention in Asia and Europe as a therapeutic agent for the treatment of various diseases
45,224,600, 46,735,458, and 60,458,180 raw Illumina cDNA sequencing reads were obtained from RNA extracted from leaves, green fruits and red fruits, respectively, of G. jasmonoides (Figure 1A)
We found that ALDH12, ALDH14, ALDH18, CCD4a, UGT7, UGT24, UGT44, UGT47, UGT60 (UGT94U1), UGT67 (UGT86D1), UGT75, UGT86 (UGT71H4), UGT89 (UGT85K18), and UGT94 were more highly expressed in the red fruit than the green fruit and leaves
Summary
Crocin has received considerable attention in Asia and Europe as a therapeutic agent for the treatment of various diseases. Crocin has been found in the stigmas of Crocus sativus L. and the fruit of Gardenia jasminoides (Sheu and Hsin, 1998; Frusciante et al, 2014). Because of the pharmacological benefits and complex harvesting process of C. sativus, the retail price of the red stigmas of C. sativus, which is called “red gold,” ranges between 2,000 and 7,000 £/kg (Frusciante et al, 2014). The fruit of G. jasminoides used in Chinese medicine have a low price because of their abundance and ease of cultivation (Figure 1A)
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