NEXT GENERATION SEQUENCING TECHNOLOGIES TOWARDS EXPLORATION OF MEDICINAL PLANTS

With the ever-increasing population, the plant cover is decreasing at an alarming rate. The medicinal plants are most affected by this because they are present in the last tier of cultivation. Let it be pharmaceutical companies or people using it for herbalism, medicinal plants have been exploited without getting a chance to flourish in their natural environment. Modern biotechnology acts as a bridge between the cultivation and utilization of medicinal plants. Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology which is a decade old but emerging field helps to unveil the importance of medicinal plants. Thus, it paves the way for sustenance of medicinal plants by molecular breeding, micropropagation, large-scale tissue culture, and other methods to conserve the plants with great medicinal value. Various NGS technologies can be found in the market like Ilumina, PacBio, Ion Torrent, and others. The present review will summarize the NGS technologies and their potential use to study the genomes, transcriptome, epigenome, and interactome of medicinal plants towards the identification of bioactive compounds