Ahmad Tahmasebi - Department of Crop Production and Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
Farzaneh Aram - Institute of Biotechnology, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
Hassan Pakniyat - Department of Crop Production and Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
Ali Niazi - Institute of Biotechnology, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
Elahe Tavakol - Department of Crop Production and Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
Esmaeil Ebrahimie - Institute of Biotechnology, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran- School of Medicine, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia- School of Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences, Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environme

Co-expression analysis is a useful tool to analysis data and detection of genes that act in the same pathway orbiological process. Echinacea purpurea is one of the most important medicinal plant of the Asteraceae family that isknown as antioxidative and antiviral agent. Despite medicinal importance of E. purpurea, very few reports areavailable for metabolic mechanisms in this plant. With the aim to elucidate the gene expression profiling andidentification of modules in E. purpurea, we performed a systems biology analysis on publicly availabletranscriptome data. Gene ontology and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis revealed that the unigenes were highlyrelated to the cellular process, primary metabolic process, carbon metabolism and biosynthesis of antibiotics. The coexpressionnetworks divided genes into multiple modules. Of these, module M2 associated with secondary metabolicprocess. Moreover, a total of 47 transcription factor families such as bHLH, bZIP, C2H2, MYB and WRKY inmodules were identified. These findings can provide an overall picture for better understanding the gene expressionpatterns and common transcriptional mechanisms in E. purpurea.

Co-expression analysis, Echinacea purpurea, Transcriptomics data