Transcriptome profiling on Euphorbia kansui elicited with methyl jasmonate

Abstract Euphorbia kansui Liou of Euphorbia (Euphorbiaceae) is an endemic traditional medicine in China, and exerted effective antitumor activity due to its specific metabolic composition, especially terpenoid.This study was designed to illustrate the detailed effects of MeJA on E. kansui through transcriptome before and after MeJA treatment. 96,040 unigenes with an average length of 812 bp were identified, among which 53,822 unigenes were annotated according to function database. Of note, we noted that MeJA treatment significantly altered the transcription pattern of E. kansui , especially at 24 hat of MeJA treatment. MeJA treatment mainly altered the expression of genes that functioned in biosynthesis of cutin, wax, flavonoid and terpenoid represented by MVA pathway in E. kansui . Typically, MeJA treatment mainly activated the expression of genes for terpenoid biosynthesis in EK at 36 hat. Further qRT-PCR verified that exogenous application of 20 μM MeJA greatly upregulate the expression levels of genes encoding enzymes in the terpenoid biosynthesis in E. kansui at 36 hat. Importantly, the contents of total terpenoid in E. kansui at 36 hat of MeJA treatment were promoted to 2.80 times of those without MeJA treatment. our results highlighted that MeJA could promoted the accumulation of terpenoid in E. kansui, which provided basis for cultivating high quality of E. kansui with higher levels of bioactive compounds.