Medicinal plants of the North-Western Himalayan region are known for their unprecedented biodiversity and valuable secondary metabolites that are unique to this dynamic geo-climatic region. From ancient times these medicinal herbs have been used traditionally for their therapeutic potentials. But from the last 2 decades increasing pharmaceutical demand, illegal and unorganized trade of these medicinal plants have accelerated the rate of over-exploitation in a non-scientific manner. In addition, climate change and anthropogenic activities also affected their natural habitat and driving most of these endemic plant species to critically endangered that foresee peril of mass extinction from this eco-region. Hence there is an urgent need for developing alternative sustainable approaches and policies to utilize this natural bioresource ensuring simultaneous conservation. Hither, arise the advent of sequencing-based transcriptomic studies significantly contributes to better understand the background of important metabolic pathways and related genes/enzymes of high-value medicinal herbs, in the absence of genomic information. The use of comparative transcriptomics in conjunction with biochemical techniques in North-Western Himalayan medicinal plants has resulted in significant advances in the identification of the molecular players involved in the production of secondary metabolic pathways over the last decade. This information could be used to further engineer metabolic pathways and breeding programs, ultimately leading to the development of in vitro systems dedicated to the production of pharmaceutically important secondary metabolites at the industrial level. Collectively, successful adoption of these approaches can certainly ensure the sustainable utilization of Himalayan bioresource by reducing the pressure on the wild population of these critically endangered medicinal herbs. This review provides novel insight as a transcriptome-based bioresource repository for the understanding of important secondary metabolic pathways genes/enzymes and metabolism of endangered high-value North-Western Himalayan medicinal herbs, so that researchers across the globe can effectively utilize this information for devising effective strategies for the production of pharmaceutically important compounds and their scale-up for sustainable usage and take a step forward in omics-based conservation genetics.

喜马拉雅西北部地区的药用植物以其前所未有的生物多样性和这个充满活力的地理气候区所独有的宝贵次生代谢物而闻名。自古以来，这些药草因其治疗潜力而被传统地使用。但从过去 20 年不断增长的药物需求开始，这些药用植物的非法和无组织贸易加速了以非科学方式过度开发的速度。此外，气候变化和人为活动也影响了它们的自然栖息地，并将这些地方性植物物种中的大多数推向了极度濒危状态，预示着该生态区将面临大规模灭绝的危险。因此，迫切需要制定替代的可持续方法和政策来利用这种天然生物资源，确保同时进行保护。因此，在缺乏基因组信息的情况下，基于测序的转录组学研究的出现极大地有助于更好地了解重要代谢途径和高价值药材的相关基因/酶的背景。在过去十年中，在喜马拉雅西北部药用植物中使用比较转录组学与生化技术相结合，在鉴定参与次级代谢途径产生的分子参与者方面取得了重大进展。这些信息可用于进一步设计代谢途径和育种计划，最终导致体外系统的开发，该系统致力于在工业水平上生产药学上重要的次级代谢物。总的来说，成功采用这些方法肯定可以通过减少这些极度濒危药材对野生种群的压力来确保喜马拉雅生物资源的可持续利用。本综述提供了作为基于转录组的生物资源库的新见解，用于了解重要的二级代谢途径基因/酶和濒危高价值喜马拉雅西北部药材的代谢，