Integrated RNA-seq analysis identifies ABC transporters mediating taxane export in Taxus species

Abstract RNA-seq datasets from medicinal yews are crucial for studying paclitaxel biosynthesis. However, cross-study data analyses are hindered by pronounced batch effects. Here, we compiled 45 RNA-seq samples from three studies across four tissues (bark, leaf, root, stem) and assessed 35 preprocessing pipelines combining six normalization strategies with five batch-effect correction approaches. Unsupervised clustering (HCA, k-means, Grade-of-Membership), evaluated using Jaccard and Adjusted Rand indices, revealed significant variability in batch effect removal. Supervised classification of tissue and project labels (Random Forest and linear/radial SVM) demonstrated improved accuracy in tissue type prediction, highlighting the effectiveness of correction methods. The processed data facilitated the identification of 189 putative ABC transporters across samples, six of which showing a strong correlation to the gene encoding 10-deacetylbaccatin-III-10β-O-acetyltransferase, a key biosynthetic enzyme in the taxol pathway. High expression levels in leaf and bark further support their role in taxane intermediates trafficking in taxol biosynthesis. Structural analysis and molecular docking further supported the selection of these candidates, and the agreement between transcriptomic ranking and docking-based prioritization suggests that these transporters may participate in taxane intermediate recognition, trafficking, or export. These findings demonstrate the importance of normalization and batch effect correction in RNA-seq analysis to advance gene discovery in Taxus species and, more broadly, in plant research. Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.