Transcriptome of towards Fritillaria thunbergii Bulbus

Fritillariae Thunbergii Bulbus (FTB) is a traditional Chinese medicine with a long history that has been widely used for its expectorant, antitussive, antiasthmatic, antiviral, and anticancer properties. Being the principal steroidal alkaloids of FTB, the total amount of peimine and peiminine in the dried bulbus served as an essential quality control standard. At present, little is known about the molecular information of F. thunbergii, and genes related to steroidal alkaloid biosynthesis are limited. To address this, we collected FTBs from five different cultivation regions in Zhejiang province and analyzed the variations in peimine/perminine accumulation among different FTBs. Furthermore, the transcriptome patterns of FTBs from different cultivation regions were sequenced and assembled de novo. A total of 238, 593 transcripts were generated, with an average length of 910 bp and N50 length of 1, 281 bp, from which 7, 935 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified from comparisons between any two out of five groups using p-value and FPKM value.