Thymus (commonly known as thyme) has been known as an economically important herb for its medicinal and aromatic properties. The most common species is Thymus vulgaris, but more than 350 different species with similar compositions and medicinal properties are mostly distributed in Europe, Asia and North Africa which are traditionally used for various purposes. Although major genes encoding proteins involved in terpenoid biosynthesis in genus Thymus have been identified, the transcriptome architecture, the molecular and cellular components/mechanisms underlying terpenoid pathway are not fully investigated yet. Hence, in this study, the transcriptomes of five different Thymus species are generated and analyzed to mine for putative genes involved in thymol and carvacrol biosynthesis. In addition, we reported the results of genome size conducted in 18 accessions belonging to 11 species.
This study provides a global overview of genes related to terpenoid pathway in Thymus, and could chip in to a better and further understanding of accumulation of terpenoids in this genus. Our phylotranscriptome analysis can help to understand relationship among most important Thymus species and provide useful resource for the future studies of evaluation.