Cymbidium goeringii belongs to the Orchidaceae, which is one of the most abundant angiosperm families. Cymbidium goeringii consist with high economic value and characteristics include fragrance and multiple flower colors. Floral scent is one of the important strategies for ensuring fertilization. However, limited genetic data is available in this non-model plant, and little known about the molecular mechanism responsible for floral scent in this orchid. Transcriptome and expression profiling data are needed to identify genes and better understand the biological mechanisms of floral scents in this species. Present transcriptomic data provides basic information on the genes and enzymes related to and pathways involved in flower secondary metabolism in this plant. In this study, RNA sequencing analyses were performed to identify changes in gene expression and biological pathways related scent metabolism. Three cDNA libraries were obtained from three developmental floral stages: closed bud, half flowering stage and full flowering stage. Using Illumina technique 159,616,374 clean reads were obtained and were assembled into 85,868 final unigenes (average length 1194 nt), 33.85% of which were annotated in the NCBI non redundant protein database. Among this unigenes 36,082 were assigned to gene ontology and 23,164 were combined with COG groups. Total 33,417 unigenes were assigned in 127 pathways according to the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway database. According these transcriptomic data we identified number of candidates genes which differentially expressed in different developmental stages of flower related to fragrance biosynthesis. In q-RT-PCR most of the fragrance related genes highly expressed in half flowering stage. RNA-seq and DEG data provided comprehensive gene expression information at the transcriptional level that could be facilitate the molecular mechanisms of floral biosynthesis pathways in three developmental phase’s flowers in Cymbidium goeringii, moreover providing useful information for further analysis on C. goeringii, and other plants of genus Cymbidium.

Methanol extract of Zizania latifolia was partitioned with EtOAc, n-BuOH, and H₂O. From the EtOAc layers, a new flavonolignan along with a known flavone and three known flavonolignans, tricin (1), salcolin A (2), salcolin B (3), and salcolin C (4), were isolated through repeated silica gel and ODS column chromatography. The chemical structure of the new flavonolignan was determined to be tricin-4′-O-[erythro-β-guaiacyl-(7″-O-methyl)-glyceryl] ether and was named salcolin D (5) based on physicochemical and spectroscopic data, including FT-NMR and ESI-MS. All compounds were isolated for the first time from this plant. Compounds 2–5, tricin derivatives, all exhibited higher anti-inflammatory and anti-allergy activities than tricin. In particular, salcolin D (5) was shown to have the strongest inhibitory activity against LPS-induced NO production in RAW 264.7 cells as well as β-hexosaminidase release in IgE-sensitized RBL-2H3 cells. These results suggest that the presence of tricin derivatives conveys allergy and inflammation treatment ability to Z. latifolia.

Two new flavonolignan glycosides, tricin-4'-O-(threo-β-guaiacylglyceryl) ether 7''-O-β-D-glucopyranose (4) and tricin-4'-O-(erythro-β-guaiacylglyceryl) ether 7''-O-β-D-glucopyranose (5) were isolated from the roots of Zizania latifolia, together with tricin-7-O-β-D-glucopyranose (1), tricin-4'-O-(threo-β-guaiacylglyceryl) ether 7-O-β-D-glucopyranose (2), and tricin-4'-O-(erythro-β-guaiacylglyceryl) ether 7-O-β-D-glucopyranose (3). Their structures were identified on the basis of spectroscopic techniques, including HR-ESI/MS, 1D-NMR (¹H, ¹³C, DEPT), 2D-NMR (gCOSY, gHSQC, gHMBC), and IR spectroscopy.