Polygonatum cyrtonema belongs to the plant family Liliaceae, and its dried rhizome is one of the sources of Chinese traditional medicine of Polygonati Rhizoma. It possesses the dual function as both medicine and food. Its main chemical components are polysaccharides and saponins. In order to understand the biosynthesis pathway of polysaccharides and diosgenin in P. cyrtonema, the corresponding transcriptomic data were obtained by extracting and sequencing the RNA of four parts of P. cyrtonema, namely, leaves, stems, rhizomes and roots. By adopting BGISEQ-500 sequencing platform, 42.03 Gb data were retrieved. Subsequently, the de novo assembly was carried out by Trinity software to obtain 137 233 transcripts, of which 68.13% of unigenes were annotated in seven databases including KEGG, GO, NR, NT, SwissProt, Pfam and KOG. Transcripts that may be involved in the biosynthesis of polysaccharides and diosgenin were analyzed by data mining. With help of qPCR, we validated expression data of four genes that were possibly involved in the biosynthesis of target metabolites. This experiment provides data for the study of biosynthetic pathways of P. cyrtonema secondary metabolites and the clarification of related structural gene functions.
Biosynthetic Pathways ; Diosgenin/metabolism* ; Gene Expression Profiling ; Phytochemicals/biosynthesis* ; Polygonatum/metabolism* ; Polysaccharides/biosynthesis* ; Transcriptome

Plants provide an immense reservoir of natural secondary metabolites. Secondary metabolites and those involved enzymes accumulate in various compartments in specific plant tissues. The biosynthesis of diverse groups of secondary metabolites is often complicated, tightly controlled via network interconnections, metabolite levels, metabolite channeling and multi-enzyme complexes, and so on. Secondary metabolite profiles could be genetically altered by two strategies, i.e. single gene modification and multiple gene modification; which thus has opened a feasible and prospective platform for secondary chemicals production in plant.
Gene Expression Regulation, Plant ; Phytochemicals ; biosynthesis ; genetics ; Plants ; genetics ; metabolism ; Plants, Genetically Modified ; genetics ; metabolism ; Secondary Metabolism ; genetics ; Transformation, Genetic