磷肥和钾肥配合施用对甘草有效成分的影响

为寻求能够提高甘草品质的最佳磷、钾配比,研究磷、钾肥不同配比对甘草有效成分的影响,以采自内蒙古自治区赤峰市翁牛特旗乌拉尔甘草为试验材料,采用全正交设计进行田间试验,施加不同配比的肥料后,采用HPLC测定2a生甘草中药典规定有效成分甘草苷、甘草酸、芹糖基甘草苷、甘草素、异甘草素的含量。试验结果表明,施用P2O5600kg/hm2、K_2O 100kg/hm2(处理14),或每公顷单施P2O5400kg(处理9)处理甘草中5种活性成分的含量均显著提高,其中药典规定成分甘草苷含量在2个处理中分别比不施肥组提高了80.29%、74.45%,甘草酸含量增加了38.61%、34.60%;提高甘草品质较好的磷、钾肥配施组合为施用P2O5600kg/hm2、K_2O 100kg/hm2,或单施P2O5400kg/hm2。

Comparative analysis of four essential Gracilariaceae species in China based on whole transcriptomic sequencing

Three Gracilaria species, G. chouae, G. blodgettii, G. vermiculophylla and a close relative species, Gracilari-opsis lemaneiformis which is now nominated as Gracilaria lemaneiformis, are the typically indigenous spe-cies which are important resources for the production of special proteins, phycobilisomes, special carbo-hydrates, and agar in China. In this study, de novo transcriptome sequencing on these four species using the next generation sequencing technology was performed for the first time. Functional annotations on assembled sequencing reads showed that the transcriptomic profiles were quite different between G. lema-neiformis and other three Gracilaria species. Comparative analysis of differential gene expression related to carbohydrate and phycobiliprotein metabolisms also showed that the expression profiles of these essential genes were different in four species. The genes encoding allophycocyanin, phycocyanin and phycoerythrin were further examined in four species and their deduced amino acid sequences were used for phylogenetic analysis to confirm that G. lemaneiformis had close relationship to genus Gracilaria, as well as that within genus Gracilaria, G. chouae had closer relationship to G. vermiculophylla rather than to G. blodgettii. The de novo transcriptome study on four species provided a valuable genomic resource for further understanding and analysis on biological and evolutionary study among marine algae.

Transcriptome-wide evolutionary analysis on essential brown algae(Phaeophyceae)in China

Brown algae （Chromista, Ochrophyta, Phaeophyceae） are a large group of multicellular algae that play im-portant roles in the ocean＇s ecosystem and biodiversity. However, poor molecular bases for studying their phylogenetic evolutions and novel metabolic characteristics have hampered progress in the field. In this study, we sequenced the de novo transcriptome of 18 major species of brown algae in China, covering six orders and seven families, using the high-throughput sequencing platform Illumina HiSeq 2000. From the transcriptome data of these 18 species and publicly available genome data of Ectocarpus siliculosus and Phaeodactylum tricornutum, we identified 108 nuclear-generated orthologous genes and clarified the phy-logenetic relationships among these brown algae based on a multigene method. These brown algae could be separated into two clades：Clade Ishigeales-Dictyotales and Clade Ectocarpales-Laminariales-Desmares-tiale-Fucales. The former was at the base of the phylogenetic tree, indicating its early divergence, while the latter was divided into two branches, with Order Fucales diverging from Orders Ectocarpales, Laminariales, and Desmarestiale. In our analysis of taxonomy-contentious species, Sargassum fusiforme and Saccharina sculpera were found to be closely related to genera Sargassum and Saccharina, respectively, while Petalonia fascia showed possible relation to genus Scytosiphon. The study provided molecular evidence for the phylo-genetic taxonomy of brown algae.

De novo sequencing and comparative analysis of three red algal species of Family Solieriaceae to discover putative genes associated with carrageenan biosysthesis

Betaphycus gelatinus, Kappaphycus alvarezii and Eucheuma denticulatum of Family Solieriaceae, Order Gi-gartinales, Class Rhodophyceae are three important carrageenan-producing red algal species, which pro-duce different types of carrageenans, beta （β）-carrageenan, kappa （κ）-carrageenan and iota （ι）-carrageenan. So far the carrageenan biosynthesis pathway is not fully understood and few information is about the So-lieriaceae genome and transcriptome sequence. Here, we performed the de novo transcriptome sequencing, assembly, functional annotation and comparative analysis of these three commercial-valuable species using an Illumina short-sequencing platform Hiseq 2000 and bioinformatic software. Furthermore, we compared the different expression of some unigenes involved in some pathways relevant to carrageenan biosynthe-sis. We finally found 861 different expressed KEGG orthologs which contained a glycolysis/gluconeogenesis pathway （21 orthologs）, carbon fixation in photosynthetic organisms （16 orthologs）, galactose metabolism （5 orthologs）, and fructose and mannose metabolism （9 orthologs） which are parts of the carbohydrate me-tabolism. We also found 8 different expressed KEGG orthologs for sulfur metabolism which might be impor-tantly related to biosynthesis of different types of carrageenans. The results presented in this study provided valuable resources for functional genomics annotation and investigation of mechanisms underlying the biosynthesis of carrageenan in Family Solieriaceae.

Phylogenomic analysis of transcriptomic sequences of mitochondria and chloroplasts of essential brown algae(Phaeophyceae)in China

The chloroplast and mitochondrion of brown algae （Class Phaeophyceae of Phylum Ochrophyta） may have originated from different endosymbiosis. In this study, we carried out phylogenomic analysis to distinguish their evolutionary lineages by using algal RNA-seq datasets of the 1 000 Plants （1KP） Project and publicly available complete genomes of mitochondria and chloroplasts of Kingdom Chromista. We have found that there is a split between Class Phaeophyceae of Phylum Ochrophyta and the others （Phylum Cryptophyta and Haptophyta） in Kingdom Chromista, and identified more diversity in chloroplast genes than mitochondrial ones in their phylogenetic trees. Taxonomy resolution for Class Phaeophyceae showed that it was divided into Laminariales-Ectocarpales clade and Fucales clade, and phylogenetic positions of Kjellmaniella crassi-folia, Hizikia fusifrome and Ishige okamurai were confirmed. Our analysis provided the basic phylogenetic relationships of Chromista algae, and demonstrated their potential ability to study endosymbiotic events.

Phylogenomic analysis of transcriptomic sequences of mitochondria and chloroplasts for marine red algae(Rhodophyta)in China

The chloroplast and mitochondrion of red algae （Phylum Rhodophyta） may have originated from different endosymbiosis. In this study, we carried out phylogenomic analysis to distinguish their evolutionary lin-eages by using red algal RNA-seq datasets of the 1 000 Plants （1KP） Project and publicly available complete genomes of mitochondria and chloroplasts of Rhodophyta. We have found that red algae were divided into three clades of orders, Florideophyceae, Bangiophyceae and Cyanidiophyceae. Taxonomy resolution for Class Florideophyceae showed that Order Gigartinales was close to Order Halymeniales, while Order Graci-lariales was in a clade of Order Ceramials. We confirmed Prionitis divaricata （Family Halymeniaceae） was closely related to the clade of Order Gracilariales, rather than to genus Grateloupia of Order Halymeniales as reported before. Furthermore, we found both mitochondrial and chloroplastic genes in Rhodophyta under negative selection （Ka/Ks〈1）, suggesting that red algae, as one primitive group of eukaryotic algae, might share joint evolutionary history with these two organelles for a long time, although we identified some dif-ferences in their phylogenetic trees. Our analysis provided the basic phylogenetic relationships of red algae, and demonstrated their potential ability to study endosymbiotic events.

Analysis of Saccharina japonica transcriptome using the high-throughput DNA sequencing technique and its vanadium-dependent haloperoxidase gene

Saccharina is one of the most important cold-water living marine brown algal genera. In this study we ana-lyzed the transcriptome of S. japonica, which belongs to the 1 000 Plants （OneKP） Project, by using a next-generation high-throughput DNA sequencing technique. About 5.16 GB of raw data were generated, and 65 536 scaffolds with an average length of 454 bp were assembled with SOAP de novo assembly method. In total, 19 040 unigenes were identified by BLAST;25 734 scaffolds were clustered into 37 Gene ontology functional groups;6 760 scaffolds were classified into 25 COG categories, as well as 2 665 scaffolds that were assigned to 306 KEGG pathways. Majority of the unigenes exhibited more similarities to algae including brown algae and diatom than other cyanobacteria, marine diatom, and plant. Saccharina japonica has the outstanding capability to accumulate halogen such as Br and I via halogenation processes from seawater. We acquired 42 different vanadium-dependent haloperoxidases （vHPO） in S. japonica transcriptome data, including 5 segments of vanadium-dependent iodoperoxidase （vIPO） and 37 segments of vanadium-de-pendent bromoperoxidase （vBPO）. Complicated analyses of identified fulllength S. japonica vBPO1 and S. japonica vBPO2 revealed the importance of vBPO among species of brown algae and the strong relationship between marine algal vBPOs and vIPOs. This study will enhance our understanding of the biological charac-teristics and economic values of S. japonica species.

Transcriptome characterization of Ishige okamurae(Phaeophyceae)shows strong environmental acclimation

Ishige okamurae, with leathery branched narrow fronds consisting of cylindrical hairs, is the typical species of the genus Ishige, which is considered as one of the most basal genera in the phylogeny of the Phaeophy-ceae. Apart from great public interest from the evolutionary respect, more attention has been brought on the abundant bioactive compounds in I. okamurae for therapeutic or economic considerations, such as di-phlorethohydroxycarmalol and ishigoside. Yet little is known about related key genes or metabolic pathways involved in I. okamurae, which calls upon us to carry out global analyses of transcriptome by next generation sequencing. Altogether, we obtained 78 583 assembled scaffolds with N50 of 1 709 nucleotides, and 25 357 unigenes with significant BLAST matches （E-value cutoff of 10-5）. In terms of characterization of the tran-scriptome of I. okamurae, we focused on anti-stress metabolic pathways and synthetic routes of bioactive compounds in an attempt to obtain a better understanding of the interactive organism-environment regula-tory networks. Pathway-based analysis helped us to deepen our comprehension of the interaction between I. okamurae and its surroundings, with MAPK signal pathway as an example. Furthermore, we discovered a wide range of novel putative functional proteins that could be of wide application, such as Rab family, using sequence-based transcriptome. In conclusion, transcriptome characterization of I. okamurae （Phaeophy-ceae） shows strong environmental acclimation.

Endogenous viral elements in algal genomes

Endogenous viral elements （EVEs） are host-genomic fragments originated from viral genomes. They have been found universally in animal and plant genomes. Here we carried out a systematic screening and analy-sis of EVEs in algal genomes and found that EVEs commonly exist in algal genomes. We classified the EVE fragments into three categories according to the length of EVE fragments. Due to the probability of sequence similarity by chance, we ignored the potential function of medium-length EVE fragments. However, long-length EVE fragments probably had capability to encode protein domains or even entire proteins, and some short-length EVE fragments had high similarity with host＇s siRNA sequences and possibly served functions of small RNAs. Therefore, short and long EVE fragments might provide regulomic and proteomic novelty to the host＇s metabolism and adaptation. We also found several EVE fragments shared by more than 3 algal genomes. By phylogenetic analysis of the shared EVEs and their corresponding species, we found that the integration of viral fragments into host genomes was an ancient event, possibly before the divergence of Chlorophytes and Ochrophytes. Our findings show that there is a frequent genetic flow from viruses to algal genomes. Moreover, study on algal EVEs shed light on the virus-host interaction in large timescale and could also help us understand the balance of marine ecosystems.

Transcriptome sequencing of essential marine brown and red algal species in China and its significance in algal biology and phylogeny

Most phaeophytes （brown algae） and rhodophytes （red algae） dwell exclusively in marine habitats and play important roles in marine ecology and biodiversity. Many of these brown and red algae are also important resources for industries such as food, medicine and materials due to their unique metabolisms and me-tabolites. However, many fundamental questions surrounding their origins, early diversification, taxonomy, and special metabolisms remain unsolved because of poor molecular bases in brown and red algal study. As part of the 1 000 Plant Project, the marine macroalgal transcriptomes of 19 Phaeophyceae species and 21 Rhodophyta species from China＇s coast were sequenced, covering a total of 2 phyla, 3 classes, 11 orders, and 19 families. An average of 2 Gb per sample and a total 87.3 Gb of RNA-seq raw data were generated. Approxi-mately 15 000 to 25 000 unigenes for each brown algal sample and 5 000 to 10 000 unigenes for each red algal sample were annotated and analyzed. The annotation results showed obvious differences in gene expres-sion and genome characteristics between red algae and brown algae;these differences could even be seen between multicellular and unicellular red algae. The results elucidate some fundamental questions about the phylogenetic taxonomy within phaeophytes and rhodophytes, and also reveal many novel metabolic pathways. These pathways include algal CO2 fixation and particular carbohydrate metabolisms, and related gene/gene family characteristics and evolution in brown and red algae. These findings build on known algal genetic information and significantly improve our understanding of algal biology, biodiversity, evolution, and potential utilization of these marine algae.

Tryptophan synthase of Phaeophyceae originated from the secondary host nucleus

Tryptophan synthase （TS, EC 4.2.1.20） catalyzes the last two steps of L-tryptophan biosynthesis. In pro-karyotes, tryptophan synthase is a multi-enzyme complex, and it consists ofαandβsubunit which forms anα-ββ-αcomplex. In fungi and diatoms, TS is a bifunctional enzyme. Because of the limited genomic and transcriptomic data of algae, there are few studies on TS evolution of algae. Here we analyzed the data of the 1000 Plants Project （1KP）, and focused on red algae and brown algae. We found out that the TS of Phaeophy-ceae were fusion genes, which probably originated from the secondary host nucleus, and that the TS of Rho-dophyta contained two genes, TSA and TSB, which both display a possible cyanobacterial origin at the time of primary endosymbiosis. In addition, there were two types of TSB genes （TSB1 and TSB2）. Through the multiple sequence alignment of TSB proteins, we found several residues conserved in TSB1 but variable in TSB2 which connect withαsubunit. The phenomenon may suggest that the TSB2 sequences of Rhodophyta cannot form stable complex with TSA.

Comparative analysis on transcriptome sequencings of six Sargassum species in China

Species of Sargassum are distributed worldwide, and are of great ecological and economic importance in marine ecosystems and bioresources. In this study, transcriptome sequencings of six Sargassum species were performed for the first time using an Illumina platform. For each sample, a total of 2.1-2.5 Gb of nucle-otides are collected and assembled into 69 871-116 790 scaffolds, with an average length of 410-550 bp and N50 length of 756-1 462 bp. A total of 20 512-28 684 unigenes of each sample were annotated and compared well with known gene sequences from nr database. Clusters of Orthologous Groups （COG）, gene ontology （GO） and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes （KEGG） analyses were also performed for further un-derstanding of gene functions and regulation pathways. Gene expression levels were calculated based on RPKM values and compared among these species, especially for those genes related to carbohydrate metab-olism. Cluster analyses indicated that the differences of global gene expression between S. fusiforme, which was nominated as Hizikia fusiformis before, and other five species were not significant. Further phylogenet-ic analysis of 108 orthologous genes confirmed that S. fusiforme had closer relationship with S. hemiphyllum rather than S. horneri. These transcriptome data provided valuable information for better understanding of genome and gene characteristics of Sargassum algae and benefiting comparative and phylogenetic studies of Phaeophyceae species in future studies.

Systematic analysis of intron size and abundance parameters in diverse lineages

All eukaryotic genomes have genes with introns in variable sizes.As far as spliceosomal introns are concerned,there are at least three basic parameters to stratify introns across diverse eukaryotic taxa:size,number,and sequence context.The number parameter is highly variable in lower eukaryotes,especially among protozoan and fungal species,which ranges from less than4%to 78%of the genes.Over greater evolutionary time scales,the number parameter undoubtedly increases as observed in higher plants and higher vertebrates,reaching greater than 12.5 exons per gene in average among mammalian genomes.The size parameter is more complex,where multiple modes appear at work.Aside from intronless genes,there are three other types of intron-containing genes:half-sized,minimal,and size-expandable introns.The half-sized introns have only been found in a limited number of genomes among protozoan and fungal lineages and the other two types are prevalent in all animal and plant genomes.Among the size-expandable introns,the sizes of plant introns are expansion-limited in that the large introns exceeding 1000 bp are fewer in numbers and transposon-free as compared to the large introns among animals,where the larger introns are filled with transposable elements and appear expansion-flexible,reaching several kilobasepairs(kbp)and even thousands of kbp in size.Most of the intron parameters can be studied as signatures of the specific splicing machineries of different eukaryotic lineages and are highly relevant to the regulation of gene expression and functionality.In particular,the transcription-splicing-export coupling of eukaryotic intron dispensing leads to a working hypothesis that all intron parameters are evolved to be efficient and function-related in processing and routing the spliced transcripts.