Study of secondary metabolite pathways that contribute to analgesic activity in three species of medicinal plants

Abstract

Given the interest in medicinal plants that have potential pain-relieving effects without the side effects of NSAIDS and opioids, secondary metabolite pathways in plants are being studied extensively. However, there are several valuable compounds for which the biosynthetic pathways are yet to be understood. Hence, the study aimed to investigate the relevant secondary metabolite pathways in three species of medicinal plants which are known to have analgesic properties - P. granatum, A. paniculata, T. divaricata. In P. granatum the pathways studied were flavenoid biosynthesis pathways and Anthocyanin biosynthesis pathways. For both these pathways, key enzymes were identified after annotation using E2P2 and PathoLogic on PathwayTools. Pathways in A. paniculata were studied similarly, but were focused on the synthesis of andrographolide. The pathways that lead to the synthesis of an andrographolide precursor were identified to have high frequency scores and the enzymes involved were identified as well. Finally, RNA samples of T.divaricata from a dwarf and wild-type plant were extracted and transcriptomes from two organs of the dwarf plant were assembled towards the pathway analysis.