Transcriptomics Analysis of Saga (Abrus precatorius Linn.) Leaves and Roots in Response to Hydroponic Cultivation and Methyl Jasmonate Treatment

Abstract

Abrus precatorius (A. precatorius) is a shrubbery plant characterized by its potentials in herbal purposes through secondary metabolites such as abrusoside and glycyrrhizin content. The production of those metabolites depends on gene expression, specifically through mevalonate pathway using transcriptomic analysis. Hydroponic cultivation with methyl jasmonate (MeJA) administration from 50 ppm, 100 ppm, and 200 ppm concentrations imposed abiotic and biotic stress to A. precatorius. These treatments intended to increase secondary metabolite production as a protective response. As a plant model, reference-guided assembly was performed with de novo assembly and de novo annotation. Three biological replicates for each soil-grown, hydroponic, and MeJA-administered hydroponic cultivation were isolated using Zymo r1054 Quick RNA Miniprep Plus kit while SQK-PCB 114.24 Native Barcoding Kit was used. The bioinformatics pipeline from EPI2ME-WF was used to elucidate the differentially-expressed genes (DEG) of the hydroponic and MeJA-administered hydroponic samples. Furthermore, the results were focused on DEGs that particularly contribute to triterpenoid biosynthesis which also has a p-value of 0.001 and ±5 as the log-fold change (LFC) value. There were no conclusive nor expected results from the research, but several interpretations were made from enzymes contributing to the MEP pathway as opposed to MVA pathway in secondary metabolites production.