The Genome of Artemisia annua Provides Insight into the Evolution of Asteraceae Family and Artemisinin BiosynthesisShow others and affiliations
2018 (English)In: Molecular Plant, ISSN 1674-2052, E-ISSN 1752-9867, Vol. 11, no 6, p. 776-788Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Artemisia annua, commonly known as sweet wormwood or Qinghao, is a shrub native to China and has long been used for medicinal purposes. A. annua is now cultivated globally as the only natural source of a potent anti-malarial compound, artemisinin. Here, we report a high-quality draft assembly of the 1.74-gigabase genome of A. annua, which is highly heterozygous, rich in repetitive sequences, and contains 63 226 protein-coding genes, one of the largest numbers among the sequenced plant species. We found that, as one of a few sequenced genomes in the Asteraceae, the A. annua genome contains a large number of genes specific to this large angiosperm clade. Notably, the expansion and functional diversification of genes encoding enzymes involved in terpene biosynthesis are consistent with the evolution of the artemisinin biosynthetic pathway. We further revealed by transcriptome profiling that A. annua has evolved the sophisticated transcriptional regulatory networks underlying artemisinin biosynthesis. Based on comprehensive genomic and transcriptomic analyses we generated transgenic A. annua lines producing high levels of artemisinin, which are now ready for large-scale production and thereby will help meet the challenge of increasing global demand of artemisinin.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cell Press , 2018. Vol. 11, no 6, p. 776-788
Keywords [en]
Artemisia annua, artemisinin, genome, evolution, transcriptome, metabolic engineering
National Category
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Research subject
Chemistry, Biochemistry
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-76879DOI: 10.1016/j.molp.2018.03.015ISI: 000434429000003PubMedID: 29703587Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85045897546OAI: oai:DiVA.org:lnu-76879DiVA, id: diva2:1233348
2018-07-172018-07-172020-10-20Bibliographically approved