Sophora flavescens Genome sequencing and assembly. Sophora flavescens

The genus Sophora (Fabaceae) is one of the most famous medicinal plants traditionally used in East Asian countries for a long time. S. flavescens is a perennial herb that grows in China, India, Japan, Korea, and Russia. Its dried roots have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, apoptosis-modulating, and anti-tumor properties. The sister species, S. koreensis, which is an endemic species in Korea and contains a more than 50% smaller genome than S. flavescens, can aid in the assembly and validation of the S. flavescens genome. The comparative genomic approach between the two genomes would reveal the recent evolutional divergence with respect to their polymorphic phenotypic profiles. Here, we used the PacBio sequencing platform to sequence and assemble the S. koreensis and S. flavescens genomes. We could infer that S. flavescens' primary duplication mode was small-scale duplication. Moreover, based on Kegg analysis, we found pathways that may control pharmaceutical metabolites in S. flavescens and S. koreensis. The Sophora species' genome assembly would further be used for comparative genomics and knowledge mining for diverse secondary metabolites.