Biotherapeutics and Bioanalytical Techniques

Colchicine is a FDA-approved plant-based alkaloid that is commonly used to treat gout. It has also been proven to bebeneficial in cardiovascular diseases and its antimitotic properties make it a promising cancer treatment. Traditionally, the natural isomer of colchicine is extracted from Gloriosa superba, which was initially isolated from Colchicum autumnale. The biosynthetic pathway of colchicine is not yet characterized, and the pathway genes and mechanisms must be elucidated to improve colchicine production. G. superba and C. autumnale transcriptomes were analyzed and compared against NCBI and Swissprot protein databases to identify the biosynthetic pathway genes. Th e annotation data of these transcriptomes revealed that there were 60927 assembled multi-tissue transcripts of C. autumnale, which represented 21945 unigenes. Additionally, G.superba has 32312 assembled multi-tissue transcripts which represented 15088 unigenes in known plant-specifi c Gene Ontology (GO). Gene annotation and pathway mapping data will be presented.