Comparative transcriptome analysis in Hericium erinaceus

In this study, we used high-throughput RNA-Seq sequencing to get the transcriptomes of six H. erinaceus species. The size of the transcriptomes ranged from 46.58 Mb to 58.14 Mb, with the number of unigene ranging from 20,902 to 37,259 across the six species. Approximate 60% of the unigenes were annotated by comparing sequences against different databases, including non-reductant (NR), Gene ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), EuKaryotic Orthologous Groups (KOG) and Swiss-Prot Databases to investigate the characteristic of transcriptomes and biosythesis of bioactive compounds, especially the polysaccharide and erinacines. Most of transcripts were putatively involved in signal transduction, carbohydrate metabolism, translation, transport and catabolism and amino acid metabolism. Genes involved in biosynthesis polysaccharide and erinacines were identified. Additionally, the open reading frame (ORFs) and simple sequence repeat (SSRs) were predicted in the six transcripts. Phylogenetic analysis was performed to investigate the relationship of the six species of H. erinaceus. Overall, the present study may facilitate the discovery of biosynthesis of bioactive secondary metabolites in H. erinaceus and provide useful information for exploring the secondary metabolites in the other Basidiomycetes genus.