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Tinospora sagittata (Oliv.) Gagnep. is an important medicinal tetraploid plant in the Menispermaceae family. Its tuber, Radix Tinosporae, used in traditional Chinese medicine, is rich in diterpenoids and benzylisoquinoline alkaloids (BIAs). To enhance our understanding of medicinal compounds' biosynthesis and Menispermaceae's evolution, we herein report assembling a high-quality chromosome-scale genome with both PacBio HiFi and Illumina sequencing technologies. PacBio Sequel II generated 2.5 million circular consensus sequencing (CCS) reads, and a hybrid assembly strategy with Illumina sequencing resulted in 4483 contigs. The assembled genome size was 2.33 Gb, consisting of 4070 scaffolds (N50 = 42.06 Mb), of which 92.05% were assigned to 26 pseudochromosomes. T. sagittata's chromosomal-scale genome assembly, the first species in Menispermaceae, aids Menispermaceae evolution and T. sagittata's secondary metabolites biosynthesis understanding., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Tinospora cordifolia (Willd.) Hook.f. & Thomson, also known as Giloy, is among the most important medicinal plants that have numerous therapeutic applications in human health due to the production of a diverse array of secondary metabolites. To gain genomic insights into the medicinal properties of T. cordifolia, the genome sequencing was carried out using 10× Genomics linked read and Nanopore long-read technologies. The draft genome assembly of T. cordifolia was comprised of 1.01 Gbp, which is the genome sequenced from the plant family Menispermaceae. We also performed the genome size estimation for T. cordifolia, which was found to be 1.13 Gbp. The deep sequencing of transcriptome from the leaf tissue was also performed. The genome and transcriptome assemblies were used to construct the gene set, resulting in 17,245 coding gene sequences. Further, the phylogenetic position of T. cordifolia was also positioned as basal eudicot by constructing a genome-wide phylogenetic tree using multiple species. Further, a comprehensive comparative evolutionary analysis of gene families contraction/expansion and multiple signatures of adaptive evolution was performed. The genes involved in benzyl iso-quinoline alkaloid, terpenoid, lignin and flavonoid biosynthesis pathways were found with signatures of adaptive evolution. These evolutionary adaptations in genes provide genomic insights into the presence of diverse medicinal properties of this plant. The genes involved in the common symbiosis signalling pathway associated with endosymbiosis (Arbuscular Mycorrhiza) were found to be adaptively evolved. The genes involved in adventitious root formation, peroxisome biogenesis, biosynthesis of phytohormones, and tolerance against abiotic and biotic stresses were also found to be adaptively evolved in T. cordifolia., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Indian natural climbing shrub Tinospora cordifolia, often known as "Guduchi" and "Amrita," is a highly esteemed medicinal plant in the Indian system of medicine (ISM). It is a member of the Menispermaceae family which consists of a rich source of protein, micronutrients, and rich source of bioactive components which are used in treating various systemic diseases. The current study was designed to know the biological characterization of the plant genome and biosynthesis of plant metabolites essential for its medicinal applications. Tinospora cordifolia's complete genome was sequenced using Illumina HiSeq2500 sequencing technology. The draft genome was assembled through a de novo method. An integrative genome annotation approach was used to perform functional gene prediction. The pathway analysis was carried out using the KEGG database. The total genome size obtained after genome assembly was 894 Mb with an N50 of 9148 bp. The integrative annotation approach resulted in 35,111 protein-coding genes. In addition, genes responsible for the synthesis of syringin, a secondary metabolite found in plants, were identified. In comparison to the standard drug (dopamine, rasagiline, and selegiline), syringin's molecular docking exhibited a greater binding affinity from the range of - 4.3 to - 6.6 kcal/mol for all the targets of Parkinson's disease and for Alzheimer's targets; it has shown the maximum potency from the range of - 6.5 to - 7.4 kcal/mol with respect to the standard drug (donepezil, galantamine, and rivastigmine). This study provides the genomic information of Tinospora cordifolia which is helpful in understanding genomic insights and metabolic pathways connected to the corresponding plant genome and predicts the possible useful effect for the molecular characterization of therapeutic drugs., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

In the present study, novel genomic-SSR (g-SSR) markers generated in our laboratory were used to characterize Tinospora cordifolia and related species. The g-SSR marker was also compared with EST-SSR and SCoT markers used earlier in our laboratory to assess the genetic diversity of T. cordifolia . A total of 26 accessions of T. cordifolia and 1 accession each of Tinospora rumphii and Tinospora sinensis were characterized using 65 novel g-SSR markers. A total of 125 alleles were detected with 49 polymorphic g-SSR markers. The number of alleles per locus varied from 1-4 with a mean value of 2.55 alleles per locus. Mean PIC, gene diversity, and heterozygosity were estimated to be 0.33, 0.41, and 0.65, respectively. The two species, namely T. rumphii and T. sinensis , showed cross-species transferability of g-SSRs developed in T. cordifolia . The success rate of cross-species transferability in T. rumphii was 95.3% and 93.8% in T. sinensis , proving the usefulness of this marker in genetic diversity studies of related species. The Tinospora accessions were also used for molecular characterization using SCoT and EST-SSR markers and compared for genetic diversity and cross-species transferability. The PIC, gene diversity, heterozygosity, and principal coordinate analysis showed that g-SSR is the better maker for a genetic diversity study of T. cordifolia. Additionally, high cross-species transferability of g-SSRs was found (95.3% and 93.8%) compared to EST-SSRs (68.8% and 67.7%) in T. rumphii and T. sinensis , respectively.

Tinospora cordifolia , commonly known as "Giloe" in India, is a shrub belonging to the family Menispermaceae. It is an important medicinal plant known for its antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, and antidiabetic properties and is used in the treatment of jaundice, gout, and rheumatism. Despite its economic importance, the limited information related to its genomic resources prohibits its judicious exploitation through molecular breeding or biotechnological approaches. In this study, we generated a meta-transcriptome assembly of 43,090 non-redundant transcripts by merging the RNASeq data obtained from Roche 454 GS-FLX, and Illumina platforms, and report the first transcriptome-based database for simple sequence repeats and transcription factors ("TinoTranscriptDB" ( Tinospora cordifolia Transcriptome Database)). We annotated 26,716 (62%) of the total transcripts successfully from National Center for Biotechnology Information non-redundant protein (NCBI-NR), gene ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), Swiss-Prot, and Pfam databases. This database contains information of 2620 perfect simple sequence repeats (P-SSRs) with a relative abundance of 340.12 (loci/Mb), and relative density of 6309.29 (bp/Mb). Excluding mono-nucleotides, the most abundant SSR motifs were tri-nucleotides (54.31%), followed by di-nucleotides (37.51%), tetra-nucleotides (4.54%), penta-nucleotides (3.16%) and hexa-nucleotides (0.45%). Additionally, we also identified 4,311 transcription factors (TFs) and categorized them into 55 sub-families. This database is expected to fill the gap in genomic resource availability in T. cordifolia and thus accelerate molecular breeding and related functional and other applied studies aimed towards genetic improvements of T. cordifolia and related species.

Background: Nowadays herbal products used in traditional medicine are sold in processed forms and thus morphological authentication is almost impossible. With herbal industry rapidly growing size, consumer safety becomes an important issue that requires special attention. Identification of herbal species in the products is therefore needed., Methods: Sequences from the selected regions (matK, rbcL, trnL and ITS1) were retrieved and analysed. Then the most suitable barcode was assessed for discrimination of T. crispa from closely related species by HRM analysis and used in authentication of commercial products., Results: The ITS1 barcode was found to be the suitable primer as melting data from the HRM assay proved to be capable of distinguishing T. crispa from its related species. The developed protocol was then employed to authenticate medicinal products in powdered form. HRM analysis of all tested samples here revealed that five out of eight products contained not only the indicated species T. crispa but also other Tinospora, that have a high level of morphological similarity., Conclusion: Misrepresentation, poor packaging and inappropriate labeling of the tested medicinal herbal products are thought to be the reason of the results here. Using Bar-HRM with the ITS marker lead to success in authenticating the tested herbal products.

Tinospora cordifolia is known for its medicinal properties owing to the presence of useful constituents such as terpenes, glycosides, steroids, alkaloids, and flavonoids belonging to secondary metabolism origin. However, there is little information available pertaining to critical genomic elements (ESTs, molecular markers) necessary for judicious exploitation of its germplasm. We employed 454 GS-FLX pyrosequencing of entire transcripts and altogether ∼25 K assembled transcripts or Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were identified. As the interest in T. cordifolia is primarily due to its secondary metabolite constituents, the ESTs pertaining to terpenoids biosynthetic pathway were identified in the present study. Additionally, several ESTs were assigned to different transcription factor families. To validate our transcripts dataset, the novel EST-SSR markers were generated to assess the genetic diversity among germplasm of T. cordifolia. These EST-SSR markers were found to be polymorphic and the dendrogram based on dice similarity index revealed three distinct clustering of accessions. The present study demonstrates effectiveness in using both NEWBLER and MIRA sequence read assembler software for enriching transcript-dataset and thus enables better exploitation of EST resources for mining candidate genes and designing molecular markers.

Identified germplasm is an important component for efficient and effective management of plant genetic resources. Traditionally, plant identification has relied on morphological characters like growth habit, floral morphology like flower colour and other characteristics of the plant. Studies were undertaken for identification and genetic variation within 15 clones of Tinospora cordifolia through random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. Analysis was made using forty decamer primers. Out of them, 15 primers were selected and used for identification and genetic relationships within 15 clones. A total of 138 distinct DNA fragments ranging from 0.2 to 3.2 kb were amplified using 15 selected random primers. The genetic similarity was evaluated on the basis of presence or absence of bands. The genetic distance was very close within the clones. Thus, these RAPD markers have the potential for identification of species and characterization of genetic variation within the population. This study will be helpful to know the genetic background of the medicinal plants with high commercial value, and also provides a major input into conservation biology.