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. 2024 Feb 24;15(3):285.
doi: 10.3390/genes15030285.

Full-Length Transcriptome Sequencing and RNA-Seq Analysis Offer Insights into Terpenoid Biosynthesis in Blumea balsamifera (L.) DC

Zhigang Ju  1 , Lin Liang  1 , Yaqiang Zheng  1 , Hongxi Shi  1 , Wenxuan Zhao  1 , Wei Sun  2 , Yuxin Pang  1   3
Affiliations

Full-Length Transcriptome Sequencing and RNA-Seq Analysis Offer Insights into Terpenoid Biosynthesis in Blumea balsamifera (L.) DC

Zhigang Ju et al. Genes (Basel). .

Abstract

Blumea balsamifera (L.) DC., an important economic and medicinal herb, has a long history of being used as a traditional Chinese medicine. Its leaves have always been used as a raw material for the extraction of essential oils, comprising large amounts of terpenoids, which have good therapeutic effects on many diseases, such as eczema, bacterial infection, and hypertension. However, the genetic basis of terpenoid biosynthesis in this plant is virtually unknown on account of the lack of genomic data. Here, a combination of next-generation sequencing (NGS) and full-length transcriptome sequencing was applied to identify genes involved in terpenoid biosynthesis at five developmental stages. Then, the main components of essential oils in B. balsamifera were identified using GC-MS. Overall, 16 monoterpenoids and 20 sesquiterpenoids were identified and 333,860 CCS reads were generated, yielding 65,045 non-redundant transcripts. Among these highly accurate transcripts, 59,958 (92.18%) transcripts were successfully annotated using NR, eggNOG, Swissprot, KEGG, KOG, COG, Pfam, and GO databases. Finally, a total of 56 differently expressed genes (DEGs) involved in terpenoid biosynthesis were identified, including 38 terpenoid backbone genes and 18 TPSs, which provide a significant amount of genetic information for B. balsamifera. These results build a basis for resource protection, molecular breeding, and the metabolic engineering of this plant.

Keywords: Blumea balsamifera; L-borneol; SMART; essential oil; terpene synthase.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The length distribution of CDSs.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The number of annotated unigenes with various databases.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Species homologous to B. balsamifera.
Figure 4
Figure 4
COG, eggNOG, and KOG functional annotation.
Figure 5
Figure 5
GO functional classification of the consensus sequence.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Venn diagram of DETs for five developmental stages.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Up-regulated and down-regulated DETs in different comparisons.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Heatmap of DETs involved in terpenoid backbone biosynthesis.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Heatmap of mTPSs and sTPSs in five developmental stages.
Figure 10
Figure 10
RT-qPCR validation of eight randomly selected genes in B. balsamifera. Red bar represents FPKM value, blue line represents RT-PCR results.
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