Abstract Panax japonicus C.A.Meyer, also known as Zhujieshen, is a classic Panax herb of the Araliaceae family. It has significant effects for the treatment of Qi stagnation and blood stasis in traditional Chinese medicine, and is used as an important substitute for P. ginseng and P. notoginseng by minority ethnic groups in China. Accordingly, many studies have been conducted to explore the pharmacological benefits of P. japonicus . However, the exploitation of P. japonicus saponins is hampered by the absence of genomic data and the limited availability of functional genes. Therefore, the recent advances in omics approaches, such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, have enabled the characterization of molecular biosynthetic mechanism of P. japonicus saponins. This review highlights the emerging breakthrough in multi-omics in identifying novel bioactive compounds and their biosynthetic genes in P. japonicus . In addition, the review also summarizes the biosynthetic pathways of triterpenoid saponins and developmental mechanisms of P. japonicus that can be helpful to realize the intrinsic metabolite differences among Panax species. Particularly, this review unravels the whole picture of saponin biosynthesis in P. japonicus on molecular aspects and provides a comprehensive understanding of multi-omics for the application value of P. japonicus in medicine.
Zhuang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.