Abstract: Transcriptome analysis of Sarcopyramis nepalensis leaves was performed via a newly developed high-throughput sequencing technology（Illumina RNA-seq）. A total of 51 305 unigenes were generated with 921 nt of average length and 1 490 nt of unigene N50 after filtering and assembly of original reads. These unigenes from the de novo assembly were further annotated using BLAST and BLAST2GO softwares. A total of 40 532 unigenes annotated with databases of non-redundant protein sequence（Nr）, non-redundant nucleotide（Nt）, Swiss-Prot, Gene Ontology database（GO）, Clusters of Orthologous Groups（COG）and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes（KEGG）databases available at NCBI as references. The proportion of unigenes annotated in Nr, Nt, Swiss-Prot, KEGG, COG and GO databases were 77.53%, 56.18%, 53.14%, 46.58%, 29.69% and 60.72%, respectively. Total 39 302 CDSs were obtained using blast in protein databases, and 2 065 CDSs were predicted using ESTscan software. KEGG pathway parsing revealed that 2 323（9.72%）unigenes were involved in biosynthesis of secondary metabolites（KO01110）, and 78 unigenes encoding the cytochrome P450 family proteins were identified. These annotated information provided theoretical foundationfordetermining the vital genes involved in biosynthesis of secondary metabolites of medicinal plants.

Key words: Sarcopyramis nepalensis transcriptome, RNA-seq