title: Integration of transcriptome, proteome and metabolism data reveals the alkaloids biosynthesis in Macleaya cordata and Macleaya microcarpa.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Macleaya spp., including Macleaya cordata and Macleaya microcarpa, are traditional anti-virus, inflammation eliminating, and insecticide herb medicines for their isoquinoline alkaloids. They are also known as the basis of the popular natural animal food addictive in Europe. However, few studies especially at genomics level were conducted on them. Hence, we performed the Macleaya spp. transcriptome and integrated it with iTRAQ proteome analysis in order to identify potential genes involved in alkaloids biosynthesis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We elaborately designed the transcriptome, proteome and metabolism profiling for 10 samples of both species to explore their alkaloids biosynthesis. From the transcriptome data, we obtained 69367 and 78255 unigenes for M. cordata and M. microcarpa, in which about two thirds of them were similar to sequences in public databases. By metabolism profiling, reverse patterns for alkaloids sanguinarine, chelerythrine, protopine, and allocryptopine were observed in different organs of two species. We characterized the expressions of enzymes in alkaloid biosynthesis pathways. We also identified more than 1000 proteins from iTRAQ proteome data. Our results strongly suggest that the root maybe the organ for major alkaloids biosynthesis of Macleaya spp. Except for biosynthesis, the alkaloids storage and transport were also important for their accumulation. The ultrastructure of laticifers by SEM helps us to prove the alkaloids maybe accumulated in the mature roots.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  To our knowledge this is the first study to elucidate the genetic makeup of Macleaya spp. This work provides clues to the identification of the potential modulate genes involved in alkaloids biosynthesis in Macleaya spp., and sheds light on researches for non-model medicinal plants by integrating different high-throughput technologies.
authors: Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Crop Germplasm Innovation and Utilization and National Chinese Medicinal Herbs Hunan Technology Center, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, China. zengjianguo@hunau.net
authors: Jianguo
authors: J
authors: Zeng
authors: Yisong
authors: Y
authors: Liu
authors: Wei
authors: W
authors: Liu
authors: Xiubing
authors: X
authors: Liu
authors: Fuqing
authors: F
authors: Liu
authors: Peng
authors: P
authors: Huang
authors: Pengcheng
authors: P
authors: Zhu
authors: Jinjun
authors: J
authors: Chen
authors: Mingming
authors: M
authors: Shi
authors: Fang
authors: F
authors: Guo
authors: Pi
authors: P
authors: Cheng
authors: Jing
authors: J
authors: Zeng
authors: Yifang
authors: Y
authors: Liao
authors: Jing
authors: J
authors: Gong
authors: Hong-Mei
authors: HM
authors: Zhang
authors: Depeng
authors: D
authors: Wang
authors: An-Yuan
authors: AY
authors: Guo
authors: Xingyao
authors: X
authors: Xiong
mesh_terms: D000470:Alkaloids / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000737:chemistry; D001692:Biological Transport; D053898:Biosynthetic Pathways / Q000235:genetics; D003577:Cytochrome P-450 Enzyme System / Q000235:genetics; D030562:Databases, Protein; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D017343:Genes, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D007553:Isotope Labeling; D055442:Metabolome / Q000235:genetics*; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009928:Organ Specificity / Q000235:genetics; D028101:Papaveraceae / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D020543:Proteome / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D060888:Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000235:genetics; D059467:Transcriptome / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D000470:Alkaloids; D010940:Plant Proteins; D020543:Proteome; D003577:Cytochrome P-450 Enzyme System