In Silico Identification and Comparative Genomics of Candidate Genes Involved in Biosynthesis and Accumulation of Seed Oil in Plants.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Comparative and Functional Genomics Volume 2012, Article ID 914843, 14 pages doi:10.1155/2012/914843 Research Article In Silico Identification and Comparative Genomics of Candidate Genes Involved in Biosynthesis and Accumulation of Seed Oil in Plants Arti Sharma and Rajinder Singh Chauhan Department of Biotechnology Bioinformatics, Jaypee University of Information Technology, Waknaghat, P.O. Dumehar Bani, Kandaghat, Solan 173 215, India Correspondence should be addressed to Rajinder Singh Chauhan, rajinder.chauhan@rediff Received 5 August 2011; Revised 27 September 2011; Accepted 14 October 2011 Academic Editor: Jinfa Zhang Copyright © 2012 A. Sharma and R. S. Chauhan. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Genes involved in fatty acids biosynthesis, modification and oil body formation are expected to be conserved in structure and function in different plant species. However, significant differences in the composition of fatty acids and total oil contents in seeds have been observed in different plant species. Comparative genomics was performed on 261 genes involved in fatty acids biosynthesis, TAG synthesis, and oil bodies formation in Arabidopsis, Brassica rapa, castor bean and soybean. In silico expression analysis revealed that stearoyl desaturase, FatB, FAD2, oleosin and DGAT are highly abundant in seeds, thereby considered as ideal candidates for mining of favorable alleles in natural population. Gene structure analysis for major genes, ACCase, FatA, FatB, FAD2, FAD3 and DGAT, which are known to play crucial role in oil synthesis revealed that the