Mining lycodine-type lkaloid biosynthetic genes and genetic markers from transcriptome of Lycopodiastrum casuarinoides

Abstract Objective Lycopodiastrum casuarinoides, a fern of the Lycopodiaceae family, is a traditional Chinese medicine, which has similar efficacy to that of Huperzia serrata in treating rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, they are distinct in the contents and compositions of lycopodium alkaloids. In this study, the biosynthesis related genes of lycopodium alkaloids and genetic markers are discovered in L. casuarinoides transcriptome. Methods The plant of L. casuarinoides was collected and was subjected to the RNA isolation, cDNA library construction, high throughput RNA sequencing and bioinformatics analysis. Results Totally 124, 524 high-quality unigenes were assembled from RNA sequencing reads, with an average sequence length of 601 bp. Among the L. casuarinoides transcripts, 61,304 shared the significant similarity (E-value Conclusion We obtain the comprehensive transcriptomic information from the high throughput RNA sequencing and bioinformatics analysis, and contribute a valuable resource of transcript sequences of L. casuarinoides in public databases.