Identification and characterization of CAT1 gene during drought stress in moth bean [Vigna aconitifolia (Jacq.) Marechal]

Abstract

Moth bean [Vigna aconitifolia (Jacq.) Marechal] is a drought hardy orphan pulse crop. However, the information related to the identification and characterization of drought stress tolerance genes is very limited. Therefore, the present investigation was formulated to identified and characterized drought tolerant gene(s) from moth bean. Five genes were selected from available expression studies of moth bean and their expression pattern was assessed during time course experiment of drought stress in moth bean. During the time course experiment of drought stress in moth bean, the catalase1 (CAT1) gene was exponentially expressed in up-regulated manner. Thus, CAT1 gene of moth bean was identified as potential candidate gene and validated through Sanger’s sequencing. The genomic sequence CAT1 gene was named as VacoCAT1 and was further characterized using various bioinformatics tools. The VacoCAT1 showed an ORF with incomplete length of 213 bp which encoded 71 amino acids. The coding sequence of VacoCAT1 gene was shown a single exon due to incomplete nature of genomic sequences. The multiple sequence alignment of VacoCAT1 revealed the highly conserved region at 3’ site of the gene as compared to CAT1 gene of other crop species including legumes. The phylogenetic analysis of VacoCAT1 and CAT1 gene of other crop species including legumes revealed three clusters. The cluster VacoCAT1 gene showed close proximity with V. radiata CAT1 in cluster one of phylogenetic tree. The identified and characterized VacoCAT1 gene can be utilized as a genomic resource for enhance drought tolerance in susceptible pulses as well as other crops.