Comparative transcriptome analysis of non-model Taxus species for taxol biosynthesis

Taxol is a known drug, approved by the food and drug administration in 1992 for the treatment of a wide range of cancers. Taxol is obtained from the taxus plant. Taxus plant has a very long life cycle and the production of taxol from the plant is a tedious process. In this study, we have tried to find new species of taxus which can be able to produce taxol and can overcome the burden of Taxus baccata plant. For this study we have used the next generation sequencing pipeline. In this study, we have collected three transcriptome data of taxus species namely Taxus X media, taxus cuspidata, and Taxus baccata. The transcriptome data contain lots of noise, to remove that noise quality check study were performed to generate high quality data. Once the high quality data were obtained trinity tool was used to generate the high quality reads. Blastx was used to find the homologous enzymes against the high quality reads. The mapping and annotation studies were performed to find out the function of the homologous enzymes. This comparative transcriptome analysis revealed that the enzymes present in the Taxus X media shows higher similarity with Taxus baccata and contains major enzymes which are involved in the taxol biosynthetic process. So the overall postulates of this study decipher that Taxus X media may be used as a new source for taxol production and it may overcome the burden of taxus plant.