Identification of candidate genes involved in steroidal alkaloids biosynthesis in organ-specific transcriptomes of Veratrum nigrum L.

Abstract Veratrum nigrum is protected plant of Melanthiaceae family, able to synthetize unique steroidal alkaloids important for pharmacy. Transcriptomes from leaves, stems and rhizomes of in vitro maintained V. nigrum plants were sequenced and annotated for genes and markers discovery. Sequencing of samples derived from the different organs resulted in a total of 108511 contigs with a mean length of 596 bp. Transcripts derived from leaf and stalk were annotated at 28%, and 38% in Nr nucleotide database, respectively. The sequencing revealed 949 unigenes related with lipid metabolism, including 73 transcripts involved in steroids and genus-specific steroid alkaloids biosynthesis. Additionally, 3203 candidate SSRs markers we identified in unigenes with average density of one SSR locus every 6.2 kb sequence. Unraveling of biochemical machinery of the pathway responsible for steroidal alkaloids will open possibility to design and optimize biotechnological process. The transcriptomic data provide valuable resources for biochemical, molecular genetics, comparative transcriptomics, functional genomics, ecological and evolutionary studies of V. nigrum .