De novo transcriptome analysis of Lantana camara L. revealed candidate genes involved in phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathway

Lantana camara L. is an economically important essential oil producing plant belonging to family Verbenaceae. It is used in medication for treating various diseases like cancer, ulcers, tumor, asthma and fever. The plant is a useful source of essential bioactive compounds such as steroids, flavonoids and phenylpropanoid glycosides etc. Nonetheless, very little is known about the genomic or transcriptomic resources of L. camara, and this might be the reason of hindering molecular studies leading to identification of improved lines. Here we used Illumina sequencing platform and performed the L. camara leaf (LCL) and root (LCR) de novo transcriptome analyses. A total of 70,155,594 and 84,263,224 clean reads were obtained and de novo assembly generated 72,877 and 513,985 unigenes from leaf (LCL) and root (LCR) respectively. Furthermore, the pathway analysis revealed the presence of 229 and 943 genes involved in the phenylpropanoid biosynthesis in leaf and root tissues respectively. Similarity search was performed against publically available genome databases and best matches were found with Sesamum indicum (67.5%) that were much higher than that of Arabidopsis thaliana (3.9%). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive transcriptomic analysis of leaf and root tissues of this non-model plant from family Verbenaceae and may serve as a baseline for further molecular studies.