인삼 사포닌 생합성의 기능 유전체 연구

"Korea ginseng (Panax ginseng C.A Meyer) is an important medicinal plant. Its root has been used as an herbal medicine that provides resistance to stress and disease, and prevents exhaustion since the ancient time. Ginsenosides, glycosylated triterpene (saponin), are considered to be the main active compounds of the ginseng root. Despite of considerable commercial interests of ginsenosides, very little is known about the genes and their biochemical pathways for ginsenoside biosynthesis. This work will focus on the identification of genes involved in ginsenoside biosynthesis and the dissection of ginsenoside biosynthetic pathway using a functional genomics tool. Expression sequence tags (ESTs) provide a valuable tool to discovery the genes in secondary metabolite biosynthesis. We generated over 21,155 ginseng ESTs that is now sufficient to facilitate discovering the genes involved in ginsenoside biosynthesis such as oxidosqualene cyclase(OSC), cytochrome P450 and glycosyltransferase. With ESTs information, microarray technology will be used for the analysis of gene expression, and the identification of genes including transcription factors expressed in tissues under given experimental condition. Heterogous system such as yeast and plants will allow us to do the functional analysis. And selected ginseng hairy root which show variation in ginsenoside production will be used as a material for functional analysis of candidate gene. Functional genomics approach will successfully accelerate gene discovery, and also provide promises of metabolic engineering for the ginsenoside production."