The North American Betula lenta L. (sweet birch) has been used for medicinal reasons for centuries by native Americans. Although sophisticated technologies have rapidly been developed, a large information gap has been observed regarding genetic regulators of medicinally important compounds in sweet birch. Very little is known on the different genes involved in secondary metabolic biosynthesis in sweet birch. To gain a deeper insight into genetic factors, we performed a transcriptome analysis of each three biological samples from different independent trees of sweet and European silver birch (B. pendula Roth). This allowed us to precisely quantify the transcripts of about 24,000 expressed genes including 29 prominent candidate genes putatively involved in the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites like terpenoids, and aromatic benzoic acids. A total number of 597 genes were differentially expressed between B. lenta and B. pendula, while 264 and 210 genes showed upregulation in the bark and leaf of B. lenta, respectively. Moreover, we identified 39 transcriptional regulatory elements, involved in secondary metabolite biosynthesis, upregulated in B. lenta. Our study demonstrated the potential of RNA sequencing to identify candidate genes interacting in secondary metabolite biosynthesis in sweet birch. The candidate genes identified in this study could be subjected to genetic engineering to functionally characterize them in sweet birch. This knowledge can be beneficial to the increase of therapeutically important compounds.

几个世纪以来，美洲原住民一直将北美桦木 ( Betula lenta L.) 用于药用。尽管尖端技术已迅速发展，但在甜桦树中药用重要化合物的遗传调节剂方面仍存在巨大的信息缺口。关于参与甜桦树次生代谢生物合成的不同基因知之甚少。为了更深入地了解遗传因素，我们对来自不同独立的甜白桦树和欧洲白桦树 ( B. pendula ) 的每三个生物样本进行了转录组分析。罗斯）。这使我们能够精确量化大约 24,000 个表达基因的转录本，其中包括 29 个主要的候选基因，这些基因假定参与了萜类化合物和芳香苯甲酸等次生代谢物的生物合成。B. lenta和B. pendula共有 597 个基因差异表达，而 B. lenta的树皮和叶片中分别有 264 个和 210 个基因表达上调。此外，我们确定了 39 个转录调控元件，这些元件参与次生代谢物的生物合成，在B. lenta中上调. 我们的研究证明了 RNA 测序在识别甜桦树次生代谢物生物合成中相互作用的候选基因的潜力。本研究中确定的候选基因可以进行基因工程，以在甜桦树中对其进行功能表征。这种知识有助于增加治疗上重要的化合物。