In silico characterization of EPR family proteins in Solanaceous vegetable crops
Shailesh Kumar Tiwari, Mahesh Kumar Basantani, Divya Gupta and Rajesh Mehrotra
ICAR-Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, India
Shri Ramswaroop Memorial University, India
Birla Institute of Technology and Science, India
: J Plant Physiol Pathol
Abstract
Eicosapenta Peptide Repeats (EPRs) proteins are tandem peptide repeats constituting a peptide repeat sequence family with a unique 25 aminoacid repeat unit of X2CX4CX10CX2HGGG, repeated multiple times and are known only in flowering plants. These non-enzymatic proteins are predicted to be located in the chloroplast and possibly play a role in gene expression and regulation. Further, these may function as a domain in addition to being a full assembly. We conducted an in silico analysis of this important, but unexplored, protein family in three vegetable crops viz tomato, capsicum and brinjal. The published genome sequences of tomato, capsicum and brinjal were searched for the presence of EPR homologues. We identified 3 putative EPRs each in brinjal and tomato genomes, and 2 EPRs in capsicum genome. The aminoacid sequence comparison of these with the published Arabidopsis thaliana and rice EPRs revealed that brinjal, tomato and capsicum proteins also contain the same conserved sequences multiple times. Interestingly, the brinjal amino acid sequences were similar to tomato EPRs and A. thaliana WRKY transcription factors. High conservation combined with narrow phylogenetic specificity of EPRs observed in this study also supports the putative role of EPRs in crop evolution and/or may have significant role in gene function. The current work is a significant step towards the identification of EPR proteins in important vegetable crops. This study also paves the way for a better understanding of the functional relevance of EPR proteins, and helps scrutinize the overlapping functions performed by these proteins in diverse plant species.
Biography
Email: tiwarishailu@gmail.com
