Comparative Analysis of Chloroplast Genomes of "Tiantai Wu-Yao" (Lindera aggregata) and Taxa of the Same Genus and Different Genera.

Lindera aggregata is a species of the Lauraceae family, which has important medicinal, economic and ornamental values. In this study, we sequenced, assembled and annotated the chloroplast genome of L. aggregata and reannotated and corrected eight unverified annotations in the same genus. The chloroplast genomes taxa from Lindera and from different genera of Lauraceae were compared and analyzed, and their phylogenetic relationship and divergence time were speculated. All the 36 chloroplast genomes had typical quadripartite structures that ranged from 150,749 to 154,736 bp in total length. These genomes encoded 111-112 unique genes, including 78-79 protein-coding genes, 29-30 tRNA and 4 rRNA. Furthermore, there were 78-97 SSRs loci in these genomes, in which mononucleotide repeats were the most abundant; there were 24-49 interspersed repeats, and forward repeat types were the most frequent. The codon bias patterns of all species tended to use codons ending with A or U. Five and six highly variable regions were identified within genus and between genera, respectively, and three common regions (ycf1, ndhF-rpl32 and rpl32-trnL) were identified, which can be used as important DNA markers for phylogeny and species identification. According to the evaluation of the Ka/Ks ratio, most of the genes were under purifying selection, and only 10 genes were under positive selection. Finally, through the construction of the evolutionary tree of 39 chloroplast genomes, the phylogenetic relationship of Lauraceae was clarified and the evolutionary relationship of Lindera was revealed. The species of genus Lindera experienced rapid adaptive radiation from Miocene to Pleistocene. The results provided valuable insights for the study of chloroplast genomes in the Lauraceae family, especially in the genus Lindera.

Revelation of enzyme/transporter-mediated metabolic regulatory model for high-quality terpene accumulation in developing fruits of Lindera glauca.

Lindera glauca with rich resource and fruit terpene has emerged as potential material for utilization in China, but different germplasms show a variation for essential oil content and volatile profiling. This work aimed to determine key regulators (enzymes or transporters) and unravel mechanism of governing high production of essential oil of L. glauca fruit (EO-LGF). Temporal analysis of fruit growth and EO-LGF accumulation (yield, volatile compounds and contents) during development revealed a notable change in the contents of EO-LGF and its 45 compounds in developing fruits, and the major groups were monoterpene and sesquiterpene, showing good antioxidant and antimicrobial activities. To highlight molecular mechanism that govern such difference in terpene content and compound in developing fruits, Genome-wide assay was used to annotate 104 genes for terpene-synthesis pathway based on recent transcriptome data, and the comparative associations of terpene accumulative amount with gene transcriptional level were conducted on developing fruits to identify some crucial determinants (enzymes and transporters) with metabolic regulation model for high-quality terpene accumulation, involving in carbon allocation (sucrose cleavage, glycolysis and OPP pathway), metabolite transport, isoprene precursor production, C5-unit formation (MEP and MVA pathways), and mono-/sesqui-terpene synthesis. Our findings may present strategy for engineering terpene accumulation for utilization.

Characterization of 20 complete plastomes from the tribe Laureae (Lauraceae) and distribution of small inversions.

Lindera Thunb. (Lauraceae) consists of approximately 100 species, mainly distributed in the temperate and tropical regions of East Asia. In this study, we report 20 new, complete plastome sequences including 17 Lindera species and three related species, Actinodaphne lancifolia, Litsea japonica and Sassafras tzumu. The complete plastomes of Lindera range from 152,502 bp (L. neesiana) to 154,314 bp (L. erythrocarpa) in length. Eleven small inversion (SI) sites are documented among the plastomes. Six of the 11 SI sites are newly reported and they locate in rpoB-trnC, psbC-trnS, petA-psbJ, rpoA and ycf2 regions. The distribution patterns of SIs are useful for species identification. An average of 83 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were detected in each plastome. The mono-SSRs accounted for 72.7% of total SSRs, followed by di- (12.4%), tetra- (9.4%), tri- (4.2%), and penta-SSRs (1.3%). Of these SSRs, 64.6% were distributed in an intergenic spacer (IGS) region. In addition, 79.8% of the SSRs are located in a large single copy (LSC) region. In contrast, almost no SSRs are distributed in inverted repeat (IR) regions. The SSR loci are useful to identifying species but the phylogenetic value is low because the majority of them show autapomorphic status or highly homoplastic characteristics. The nucleotide diversity (Pi) values also indicated the conserved nature of the IR region compared to LSC and small single copy (SSC) regions. Five spacer regions with high Pi values, trnH-psbA, petA-psbJ and ndhF-rpl32, rpl32-trnL and Ψycf1-ndhF, have a potential use for the molecular identification study of Lindera and related species. Lindera species form a paraphyletic group in the plastome tree because of the inclusion of related genera such as Actinodaphne, Laurus, Litsea and Neolitsea. A former member of tribe Laureae, Sassafras, forms a clade with the tribe Cinnamomeae. The SIs do not affect the phylogenetic relationship of Laureae. This result indicated that ancient plastome captures may have contribute to the mixed intergeneric relationship of Laureae. Alternatively, the result may indicate that the morphological characters defined the genera of Lauraceae originated for several times.

Comparative chloroplast genomics and phylogenetics of nine Lindera species (Lauraceae).

Lindera, a core genus of the Lauraceae family, has important economic uses in eastern Asia and North America. However, its historical diversification has not been clarified. In this study, we report nine newly sequenced Lindera plastomes. The plastomes of these nine Lindera species range from 152,211 (L. nacusua) to 152,968 bp (L. metcalfiana) in length, similar to that of another Lauraceae species, Litsea glutinosa (152,618 bp). The length variation of these plastomes derived from the length variation in the loci ycf1, ycf2, ψycf1, and ndhF-ψycf1. Comparing our sequences with other available plastomes in the Lauraceae indicated that eight hypervariable loci, ihbA-trnG, ndhA, ndhF-rpl32, petA-psbJ, psbK-psbI, rps16, trnS-trnG, and ycf1, could serve as DNA barcodes for species delineation, and that the inverted repeats (IRs) showed contraction/expansion. Further phylogenetic analyses were performed using 32 complete plastomes of Lauraceae and seven barcodes from 14 additional species of Lindera and related species in the core Lauraceae. The results showed that these Lindera species grouped into two or four sub-clades, and that two Litsea species and Laurus nobilis were located in the same sub-clade as five Lindera species. These data support a close relationship between the genera Laurus, Lindera, and Litsea, and suggest that Lindera is polyphyletic.

De novo assembly and characterization of the floral transcriptome of an economically important tree species, Lindera glauca (Lauraceae), including the development of EST-SSR markers for population genetics.

Lindera glauca (Lauraceae) is an economically important East Asian forest tree characterized by a dioecy in China and apomixis in Japan. However, patterns of population genetic diversity and structure of this species remain unknown for this species due to a lack of efficient molecular markers. In this study, we employed Illumina sequencing to analyze the transcriptomes of the female and male flower buds of L. glauca. We retrieved 59,753 and 75,075 unigenes for the female and male buds, respectively. Based on sequence similarity, 44,379 (74.27 %) unigenes for the female and 45,414 (60.49 %) unigenes for the male were matched to public databases. We identified 11,127 putative differentially expressed genes between the female and male buds and 20,048 expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeats (EST-SSRs). From 3147 primer pairs designed successfully, 120 were selected for validation of polymorphism, and 13 could reliably amplify polymorphic bands and exhibited moderate levels of genetic diversity (e.g., N A = 4.42; H E = 0.56) when surveyed across 96 individuals of altogether six L. glauca populations from China and Japan. One of the three population genetic clusters identified in China was fixed in Japan, suggesting a historical population bottleneck following island immigration. The present study has generated a wealth of transcriptome data for future functional genomic research focused on the variable reproductive system of L. glauca (dioecy, apomixis) as well as EST-SSR markers for population genetics studies and its intriguing evolutionary shift from dioecy to apomixis in the wake of island colonization.

Integrated transcriptome sequencing and dynamic analysis reveal carbon source partitioning between terpenoid and oil accumulation in developing Lindera glauca fruits.

Lindera glauca fruits (LGF) with the abundance of terpenoid and oil has emerged as a novel specific material for industrial and medicinal application in China, but the complex regulatory mechanisms of carbon source partitioning into terpenoid biosynthetic pathway (TBP) and oil biosynthetic pathway (OBP) in developing LGF is still unknown. Here we perform the analysis of contents and compositions of terpenoid and oil from 7 stages of developing LGF to characterize a dramatic difference in temporal accumulative patterns. The resulting 3 crucial samples at 50, 125 and 150 days after flowering (DAF) were selected for comparative deep transcriptome analysis. By Illumina sequencing, the obtained approximately 81 million reads are assembled into 69,160 unigenes, among which 174, 71, 81 and 155 unigenes are implicated in glycolysis, pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), TBP and OBP, respectively. Integrated differential expression profiling and qRT-PCR, we specifically characterize the key enzymes and transcription factors (TFs) involved in regulating carbon allocation ratios for terpenoid or oil accumulation in developing LGF. These results contribute to our understanding of the regulatory mechanisms of carbon source partitioning between terpenoid and oil in developing LGF, and to the improvement of resource utilization and molecular breeding for L. glauca.

Transcriptome analysis of distinct Lindera glauca tissues revealed the differences in the unigenes related to terpenoid biosynthesis.

The Lindera glauca, an economically and ecologically important tree species, has emerged as a novel potential plant for the intensive studies of essential oil owing to its characteristic aroma and medicinal property in distinct tissues. However, the transcriptome information and molecular research on this species is still unknown to date. To reveal the formation and accumulation mechanism of essential oil in distinct L. glauca tissues, it is crucial to analyze transcriptome and to identify the full repertoire of potential unigenes involved in terpenoid biosynthesis. In this paper, the transcriptomes of the roots, sarcocarps, stems, leaves and kernels of L. glauca were analyzed for the first time by using short-read sequencing technology (Illumina). A total of 27.2GB valid reads (the average length=92.7bp) was obtained from distinct L. glauca tissues, and then assembled de novo into 264,831 unigenes by Trinity strategy (mean size=560.2bp). The resulting 98,141 unigenes (38%) of all the assembled unigenes were annotated in multiple public databases, of which 114 potential unigenes were identified to be involved in the terpenoid biosynthetic accumulation in L. glauca. Additionally, the differential expression profiles revealed 675, 697, 432, 1702 and 844 high tissue-specificity expressions of unigenes in the roots, sarcocarps, stems, leaves and kernels of L. glauca, respectively. Overall, these obtained comprehensive unigene resources will contribute to advance the research regarding the specific plant and more specifically discovery of genes participating in the terpenoid pathway and its regulation in specific tissues of the L. glauca, but also could help the understanding of the differential accumulation of secondary metabolites in distinct plant tissues.