Differential expressed analysis of <i>Tripterygium wilfordii</i> unigenes involved in terpenoid backbone biosynthesis

<i>Tripterygium wilfordii</i> Hook. f. is the traditional medicinal plants in China. Triptolide, wilforgine, and wilforine are the bioactive compounds in <i>T. wilfordii.</i> In this study, the contents of three metabolites and transcription levels of 21 genes involved in three metabolites biosynthesis in <i>T. wilfordii</i> were examined using high-performance liquid chromatography and reverse transcription PCR after application of methyl jasmonate (MeJA) on hairy roots in time course experiment (3–24 h). The results indicated that application of MeJA inhibited triptolide accumulation and promoted wilforgine and wilforine metabolites biosynthesis. In hairy roots, wilforgine content reached 693.36 μg/g at 6 h after adding MeJA, which was 2.23-fold higher than control. The accumulation of triptolide and wilforine in hairy roots increased the maximum at 9 h, which was 1.3- and 1.6-folds more than the control. Most of the triptolide secretes into the medium, but wilforgine and wilforine cannot secrete into the medium. The expression levels of unigenes which involved terpenoid backbone biosynthesis exist the correlation with marker metabolites (triptolide, wilforgine and wilforine) after induction by MeJA, and can be then used to infer flux bottlenecks in <i>T. wilfordii</i> secondary metabolites accumulation. These results showed that these genes may have potential applications in the metabolic engineering of <i>T. wilfordii</i> metabolites production.