Abstract:
Improving abiotic stress tolerance traits in crops using transgenic techniques has
been highlighted in the recent years. Identification of the potentially hidden
regulatory signals within the coding sequences of genes is important in the
transfer of such genes via genetic engineering. Identification of short motifs in
coding sequencesthose probably important for gene regulation was the major aim
of the study. The bioinformatics analysis was used to study coding sequences of
two genes related to drought response which encode Betaine aldehyde
dehydrogenase (BADH) and Ferritin, in nine different crops including monocots
(rice, foxtail millet, sorghum and maize) and dicots (chick pea, pigeon pea, adzuki
bean, mung bean and cowpea). Coding Sequences were retrieved from the
National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). ClustalW multiple
sequence alignment program was performed using MEGA5 software.
Phylogenetic trees following maximum likelihood approach with 100 bootstrap
analysis and pairwise distances were obtained using MEGA5 software. The
DnaSP5 software was used to analyze the conserved regions of two genes. BADH
and Ferritin genes showed seven and six conserved regions respectively with
significant (P≤0.05) conservation and homozygosity values. Phylogenetic tree of
BADH showed three distinct clusters whereas only two clusters were observed
for Ferritin gene. There was a significant evolutionary divergence among CDS of
BADH (0.017 - 0.406) and Ferritin (0.009 - 0.509) genes. The observed conserved
regions for BADH and Ferritin CDS can be considered as the sequences with
functional potential. The results indicated that some highly conservative
sequences obtained from BADH and Ferritin CDS could be used in the phylogeny
study to reconstruct the phylogenetic tree of some far related species in the
taxonomy. Furthermore, the results of this study suggest that BADH and Ferritin
encoding genes can be useful sources for genetic engineering of drought tolerance
in plant species.
