Transcriptome analysis of stem wood of Nothapodytes nimmoniana (Graham) Mabb. identifies genes associated with biosynthesis of camptothecin, an anti-carcinogenic molecule.

Camptothecin (CPT), a monoterpene indole alkaloid, is a potent inhibitor of DNA topoisomerase I and has applications in treating ovarian, small lung and refractory ovarian cancers. Stem wood tissue of Nothapodytes nimmoniana (Graham) Mabb. (family Icacinaceae) is one of the richest sources of CPT. Since there is no genomic or transcriptome data available for the species, the present work sequenced and analysed transcriptome of stem wood tissue on an Illumina platform. From a total of 77,55,978 reads, 9,187 transcripts were assembled with an average length of 255 bp. Functional annotation and categorization of these assembled transcripts unraveled the transcriptome architecture and also a total of 13 genes associated with CPT biosynthetic pathway were identified in the stem wood tissue. Four genes of the pathway were cloned to full length by RACE to validate the transcriptome data. Expression analysis of 13 genes associated with CPT biosynthetic pathway in 11 different tissues vis-a-vis CPT content analysis suggested an important role of NnPG10H, NnPSLS and NnPSTR genes in the biosynthesis of CPT. These results indicated that CPT might be synthesized in the leaves and then perhaps exported to stem wood tissue for storage.