Biotherapeutics and Bioanalytical Techniques

The pharmaceutical demand for plant-based colchicine is increasing because it is an eff ective FDA-approved gout medicine that also has potential for cancer therapeutics due to its ability to bind to microtubules and halt cell division. Understanding the biorhizome developmental genes are necessary to improve the biomanufacturing of colchicine. RNA-Seq was used to identify the rhizome developmental genes from Gloriosa superba and Colchicum autumnale. Th e transcriptome of both species were compared against NCBI and Swissprot protein databases. Python scripts were utilized to parse the transcriptome.

Bioinformatics analysis revealed 60927 assembled multiple-tissue transcripts of C. autumnale represented 21948 unigenes and G. superba has 32312, which represented 15089 unigenes in known plant specifi c gene ontology (GO). Further GO analysis was used to identify known rhizome-specifi c and developmental genes in G. superba. Th is study could provide a foundation to

enhance the biorhizome-based colchicine biomanufacturing in G. superba.