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.

浙贝母（Fritillariae Thunbergii Bulbus, FTB）是一味历史悠久的传统中药，凭借其祛痰、镇咳、平喘、抗病毒及抗肿瘤的药理活性被广泛应用。贝母素甲（peimine）与贝母素乙（peiminine）作为浙贝母的主要甾体类生物碱，二者在干燥鳞茎中的总含量是其核心质量控制标准。目前学界对浙贝母的分子遗传信息所知甚少，与其甾体类生物碱生物合成相关的功能基因资源也较为匮乏。为解决这一研究短板，本研究从浙江省五个不同栽培产区采集浙贝母样品，分析了不同产区浙贝母中贝母素甲/贝母素乙的积累差异。此外，对不同产区浙贝母的转录组进行了测序并开展从头组装，最终共获得238593条转录本，平均长度为910 bp，N50长度为1281 bp；基于p值与FPKM值，通过五组样本间的任意两两比较，共鉴定出7935个差异表达基因（differentially expressed genes, DEGs）。