In silico analysis of phylogeny and PCR amplification of putative gene of rhamnosyltransferase in green plants
Student name: Ms Priyanka Babuta
Guide: Dr Pallavi Somvanshi
Year of completion: 2013
Host Organisation: Bioinformatics Infrastructure Facility (BIF), Gargi College, University of Delhi
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr Aparajita Mohanty
Abstract: Rhamnosyltransferase is an important enzyme in the biosynthetic pathway of
flavonoids, an essential class of secondary metabolites. This enzyme has a key role
in the production of various forms of rutinosides such as rutin (quercetin-3-
rutinoside) and kaempferol-3-rutinoside.These rutinosides are essential dietary
components due to their health-promoting properties. The present investigation, in
silico analysis of the enzyme in green plants is carried out using sequence alignment,
phylogenetic analysis and conserved domain search with an overall objective to
understand the diverse roles of the enzyme and the correlation it may have with
protein sequence diversity. The result shows protein sequences belong to the same
domain of glycosyltransferase superfamily but sequence alignment and phylogenetic
analysis have shown low level of similarity in protein sequences of different plant
taxa. Nucleotide sequence alignment is used to design primers for the amplification
of gene sequence of the enzyme, rhamnosyltransferase in different species of
Brassica. In silico designed primers could amplify the genes/putative genes or their
part from different species of Brassica and it has been proven using wet lab
techniques.
Keywords: Anthocyanidin, Arabidopsis thaliana, Brassica sp., Flavonol,
Rhamnosyltransferase
