De novo assembly and analysis of Artemisia argyi transcriptome and identification of genes involved in terpenoid biosynthesis

Artemisia argyi Lev. et Vant., a common ancient compositae species, is widely utilized in traditional Chinese medicine. The underlying mechanism of terpenoid biosynthesis in leaf has been suggested to play an important role in this medicine. However, the transcriptome of A. argyi has not been established. Here, we performed RNA sequencing in leaf, root and stem tissues to identify all possibly transcribed genes. We assembled a total of 99,807 unigenes by analyzing the expression profiling that were generated from the three tissues. Of them, 67,446 unigenes (67.58%) were annotated from public databases including GO, KEGG, COG. We further performed differential gene expression analysis between leaf with stem and root tissue. Our findings revealed that a total of 7,725 unigenes were specified transcribed in leaf. In particular, we determined multiple genes, which encode significant enzymes including HMGR, MVD, DXS, DXR, HDS and HDR, and transcription factors related to terpenoid synthesis. This study established a valuable resource of transcriptome and identified many transcribed genes related to terpenoid biosynthesis, providing the genomic basis for further studies on the molecular mechanism of the medicine for this species. De novo assembly and analysis of Artemisia argyi transcriptome