The generation and analysis of genomic resources information are essential to understand genomic features of crops. Even though medicinal component and its effect of Panax ginseng was well studied, the genomic study has been recently started. The ginseng genome has been known to undergo two rounds of whole genome duplication (WGD), therefore we investigated an evidence of WGD in ginseng draft sequence for understanding current ginseng genome structure. Four paralogous gene-rich genome blocks were found, consisted by eight scaffolds, using about 3.0 Gb whole genome draft sequence and 48,821 unigenes of P. ginseng generated by whole genome shotgun sequencing. The eight scaffold sequences were ordered and connected into four genomic blocks, using zig-zag extension within scaffold sequences recently duplicated. The paralogous scaffold pairs that were recently duplicated showed high sequence conservation in genic and non-genic regions. However, paleo duplicated paralogue scaffold sequences showed little conservation only in genic regions. Finally, a total of 110 paralogous gene pairs and its expression were identified from recently and paleo duplicated scaffold pairs, which were co-linear among four genomic blocks. This study provides the first insight into duplicated genome structure of ginseng and will be a valuable information for further ginseng genomics including improvement of draft sequence quality, chromosome anchoring of scaffolds, and genetic mapping.

Genome duplication is an abundance phenomenon and in plant kingdom and consequently formed paralogous region. Korean ginseng (Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer) has a possibility of tetraploid by comparing chromosome numbers of relative species. During development of EST-SSR markers in Korean ginseng, most of primer sets have produced multiple bands in gel electrophoresis. In this study, for identifying origin of multiple bands, five EST-SSR markers showing multi-band were selected and two bands around expected size were sequenced. Sequence comparison classified the multiple bands into individual loci. Two bands can be identified by SNP or InDel variation with number of SSR units. Sequencing result represented that paralogous loci with high similarity were existence caused by recent duplication. One clear band were amplified with newly designed locus specific primer picked from SNP variation. SNP and InDel polymorphism between paralgous loci were useful for identifying each locus. This study will provide better understanding of ginseng genome and will be helpful for development of DNA markers.

Genetic map provides basic and important informations for breeding. Therefore, genetic map construction is a essential process in plant research. Panax ginseng is one of the most famous medical plant in the world. However, genetic informations of this medical plant for breeding are not enough. Because of little informations, genetic map construction of panax ginseng provides very useful information for breeding. Using Solexa next generation sequencing (NGS) technology, we have been produced a lot of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and whole genome sequences from Chunpoong (368 Gb) and Yunpoong (6 Gb) cultivar. To develop large amount of DNA markers and thus construct high resolution genetic map, we inspect large scale of SSR motif and putative SNP sites which can be used as dCAPs markers using produced ginseng’s sequence data. As a result, we can find a number of DNA markers that have polymorphism between Yunpoong and Chunpoong cultivar. These developed DNA markers were analyzed for F2 population of Yunpoong x Chunpoong to find markers showing Mendelian segregation ratio 1:2:1.