Advances in Ginkgo biloba research: Genomics and metabolomics perspectives

Abstract

The maiden hair tree, Ginkgo biloba is very much resistant to a wide spectrum of biotic and abiotic stress conditions. It hardly seems to be attacked by any herbivore or microbe. In spite of its strong resistant nature to wide stress conditions, only little research has been carried out at genomics and metabolomics level to understand its mechanism of stress resistance. Ginkgolide and bilobalide, the unique terpene trilactone present in G. biloba were found to play an important role during stress conditions. Massive parallel sequencing of G. biloba leads to generation of 64057 expressed sequence tags (EST’s). Beside this, chloroplast genome (cpDNA) of G. biloba has been sequenced. This massive parallel sequencing of ESTs, along with cpDNA genome, will open the door for high throughput genomic research.

Key words: Ginkgo biloba, cycad, ginkgolide, bilobalide, bilobol, proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H NMR).