De novo sequencing and assembly of Azadirachta indica fruit transcriptome

Abstract

Neem is a unique, versatile and im-portant tree species, used for multi-ple purposes, and often called as the panacea of all diseases. The plant has special significance to India and due to its diverse use, is called as the natures pharmacy. Neem oil and its derivatives support multiple cottage industries and is one of the important contributors to the countrys bio-economy. The neem tree is also one of the most intensively studied sources for natural products. Due to its wide array of applications, azadirachtin, a terpenoid derived from neem seed kernel, has been the subject of intense research for dec-ades. Azadirachtin, has been one of the most widely studied chemical compounds of plant origin and its commercial formulations have been found to be toxic against a large range of insect species, whilst retain-ing very low mammalian toxicity. Although efforts have been success-ful in the past towards synthesizing azadirachtin in the lab, the commer-cial viability of the lab-synthesized azadirachtin remains low. Despite the wealth of information, there is no sequence information available on its genome and/or transcriptomes. Se-quencing the plants genome and its coding parts is the first step towards understanding of the diverse path-ways and enzymes involved in the synthesis of terpenoids, including azadirachtin, which might pave way(s) for mass-production of these useful terpenoids and other chemi-cals through microbial engineering.