Abstract
Background: Fuzi is a processed product of the lateral root of Aconitum carmichaelii Debx, a plant of the Ranunculaceae, and has been used to treat various diseases. This study used Illumina Hiseq High-throughput platform to sequence, assemble and annotate, screen development related genes, transcription pathways and functional enrichment in true root, lateral roots and “bridge”, and analyzed their correlations with the formation and development of lateral roots of A.carmichaelii, which can reveal the process and regulation mechanism of lateral roots growth and maturation of A. carmichaelii. Results: By sequencing, a total of 66.13Gb clean data and 28,982 unigenes with function annotation were finally obtained, with N50 of 1,627 bp, and 12,833 genes were assigned to 130 specific metabolic pathways by Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), then 2,599 were significantly differentially expressed. The KEGG analysis of the DEGs revealed that it was mainly enriched in starch and sucrose metabolism, ribosome, carbon metabolism, plant hormone signal transduction which play an important role in the expansion of lateral roots. The DEGs and pathways indicated that there was little differences between true root and “bridge”, while a big difference between them and lateral roots. The DEGs of auxin, cytokinin and other pathways may be conducive to the formation of lateral roots, which explained the development mechanism of lateral roots from a molecular point of view. Conclusions: This study provides a reference for the study of cultivation and management of lateral roots of A. carmichaelii.