Abstract:
Taxol, a natural product derived from Taxus, is one of the most effective natural anticancer
drugs and the biosynthetic pathway of Taxol is the basis of heterologous bio-production.
Here, we report a high-quality genome assembly and annotation of Taxus yunnanensis based
on 10.7 Gb sequences assembled into 12 chromosomes with contig N50 and scaffold N50 of
2.89 Mb and 966.80 Mb, respectively. Phylogenomic analyses show that T. yunnanensis is
most closely related to Sequoiadendron giganteum among the sampled taxa, with an estimated
divergence time of 133.4−213.0 MYA. As with most gymnosperms, and unlike most
angiosperms, there is no evidence of a recent whole-genome duplication in T. yunnanensis.
Repetitive sequences, especially long terminal repeat retrotransposons, are prevalent in the
T. yunnanensis genome, contributing to its large genome size. We further integrated genomic
and transcriptomic data to unveil clusters of genes involved in Taxol synthesis, located on the
chromosome 12, while gene families encoding hydroxylase in the Taxol pathway exhibited
significant expansion. Our study contributes to the further elucidation of gymnosperm relationships
and the Taxol biosynthetic pathway.
