Deep Sequencing of the Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi Transcriptome Reveals Flavonoid Biosynthetic Profiling and Organ-Specific Gene Expression

PLoS One. 2015 Aug 28;10(8):e0136397. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0136397. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi has long been used in traditional medicine to treat various such widely varying diseases and has been listed in the Chinese Pharmacopeia, the Japanese Pharmacopeia, the Korean Pharmacopoeia and the European Pharmacopoeia. Flavonoids, especially wogonin, wogonoside, baicalin, and baicalein, are its main functional ingredients with various pharmacological activities. Although pharmaological studies for these flavonoid components have been well conducted, the molecular mechanism of their biosynthesis remains unclear in S. baicalensis. In this study, Illumina/Solexa deep sequencing generated more than 91 million paired-end reads and 49,507 unigenes from S. baicalensis roots, stems, leaves and flowers. More than 70% unigenes were annotated in at least one of the five public databases and 13,627 unigenes were assigned to 3,810 KEGG genes involved in 579 different pathways. 54 unigenes that encode 12 key enzymes involved in the pathway of flavonoid biosynthesis were discovered. One baicalinase and three baicalein 7-O-glucuronosyltransferases genes potentially involved in the transformation between baicalin/wogonoside and baicalein/wogonin were identified. Four candidate 6-hydroxylase genes for the formation of baicalin/baicalein and one candidate 8-O-methyltransferase gene for the biosynthesis of wogonoside/wogonin were also recognized. Our results further support the conclusion that, in S. baicalensis, 3,5,7-trihydroxyflavone was the precursor of the four above compounds. Then, the differential expression models and simple sequence repeats associated with these genes were carefully analyzed. All of these results not only enrich the gene resource but also benefit research into the molecular genetics and functional genomics in S. baicalensis.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Flavanones / biosynthesis
  • Flavanones / genetics*
  • Flowers / genetics
  • Flowers / metabolism
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Plant
  • Organ Specificity
  • Plant Roots / genetics
  • Plant Roots / metabolism
  • Scutellaria baicalensis / genetics*
  • Scutellaria baicalensis / metabolism
  • Transcriptome*

Substances

  • Flavanones
  • baicalein
  • wogonin

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Projects in the National Science & Technology Pillar Program funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (www.most.gov.cn) to FM [Grant number: 2012BAI29B02], the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities funded by the Beijing Normal University (www.bnu.edu.cn) to FM [Grant number: 2012LZD06], the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program funded by the Chengde Medical University (www.cdmc.edu.cn) to JL [Grant number: 201502], the Natural Science Foundation for the Youth funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (www.nsfc.gov.cn) to LS [Grant number: 81303158] and the Major Scientific and Technological Special Project for “Significant New Drugs Creation” funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (www.most.gov.cn) to LS [Grant number: 2014ZX09304307001]. All the funders are noncommercial funders. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.