LAUSR

Taxus, commonly known as yew, is a well-known gymnosperm with great ornamental and medicinal value. Here by assembling a chromosome-level genome of the Himalayan yew (Taxus wallichiana) with 10.9 Gb in 12 chromosomes, we revealed that the driving force of gene family evolution in the genome was tandem duplication, that not only clustered the main genes of taxadiene synthase, P450s and transferases for paclitaxel biosynthesis on the same chromosome, but also provided genetic resources for the nature to sculpture the core structure of taxoids at different positions and subsequently established the complex pathway of paclitaxel by neofunctionalization. We also confirmed two isoenzymes of the known genes in paclitaxel biosynthetic pathway from the cluster. The reference genome will serve as a platform for decoding the complete biosynthetic pathway of paclitaxel and understanding the chemodiversity of taxoids in gymnosperm.