Abstract
BackgroundOcimum sanctum L. (O. tenuiflorum) family-Lamiaceae is an important component of Indian tradition of medicine as well as culture around the world, and hence is known as “Holy basil” in India. This plant is mentioned in the ancient texts of Ayurveda as an “elixir of life” (life saving) herb and worshipped for over 3000 years due to its healing properties. Although used in various ailments, validation of molecules for differential activities is yet to be fully analyzed, as about 80 % of the patents on this plant are on extracts or the plant parts, and mainly focussed on essential oil components. With a view to understand the full metabolic potential of this plant whole nuclear and chloroplast genomes were sequenced for the first time combining the sequence data from 4 libraries and three NGS platforms.ResultsThe saturated draft assembly of the genome was about 386 Mb, along with the plastid genome of 142,245 bp, turning out to be the smallest in Lamiaceae. In addition to SSR markers, 136 proteins were identified as homologous to five important plant genomes. Pathway analysis indicated an abundance of phenylpropanoids in O. sanctum. Phylogenetic analysis for chloroplast proteome placed Salvia miltiorrhiza as the nearest neighbor. Comparison of the chemical compounds and genes availability in O. sanctum and S. miltiorrhiza indicated the potential for the discovery of new active molecules.ConclusionThe genome sequence and annotation of O. sanctum provides new insights into the function of genes and the medicinal nature of the metabolites synthesized in this plant. This information is highly beneficial for mining biosynthetic pathways for important metabolites in related species.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1640-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Ocimum sanctum L. (O. tenuiflorum) family-Lamiaceae is an important component of Indian tradition of medicine as well as culture around the world, and is known as “Holy basil” in India
O. sanctum genome (386 Mb) seems to be quite compact with relatively less repeat sequences, even though it falls in the identical phylogenetic clade
In contrast to the genome sizes of the plants used in the gene model prediction like Solanum lycopersicum (~900 Mb) and Nicotiana tabacum (~4567 Mb), O. sanctum genome (~386 Mb) falls in the category of the plants with small genome and is just 1.5 times that of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana (~135 Mb) while approximately same size as that of Oryza sativa (~420 Mb) [47, 60, 43, 61]
Summary
Ocimum sanctum L. (O. tenuiflorum) family-Lamiaceae is an important component of Indian tradition of medicine as well as culture around the world, and is known as “Holy basil” in India. (O. tenuiflorum) family-Lamiaceae is an important component of Indian tradition of medicine as well as culture around the world, and is known as “Holy basil” in India. This plant is mentioned in the ancient texts of Ayurveda as an “elixir of life” (life saving) herb and worshipped for over 3000 years due to its healing properties. (O. tenuiflorum) is an important sacred medicinal plant of India known as “holy basil”, Thulasi, Vishnupriya, and Tulsi [1] and worshipped for over more than 3000 years [2, 3]. The volatile oil of leaf [11] contains eugenol (1-hydroxy-2-methoxy-4allylbenzene), euginal, urosolic acid [12], carvacrol, Rastogi et al BMC Genomics (2015) 16:413
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