Current Science

Alok Das ¹, K. N. Poornima ¹, Shallu Thakur ¹, N. P. Singh ¹

Affiliations
1 Division of Plant Biotechnology, ICAR-Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur 208 024, IN

Abstract

Mungbean (Vigna radiata L.) (family Fabaceae) is a diploid (2n = 2x = 22) pulse crop, cultivated predominantly in South East Asia. The genus Vigna also contains several major agriculturally important legumes like black gram (V. mungo), rice bean (V. umbellata), moth bean (V. aconitifolia) and adzuki bean (V. angularis). The grains are rich in protein and minerals and hence form important component of human diet. Mung bean is reported to be domesticated in India approx. 4,000-6,000 years ago.

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Poornima K. Narayana ¹, Alok Das ¹, Narendra P. Singh ¹

Affiliations
1 Division of Plant Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur 208 024, IN

Abstract

Chloroplast is an important organelle and a hub of photosynthetic reactions that occur in all plants. Majority of the chloroplast proteins are encoded by the nucleus and then transported into the chloroplast. The chloroplast transport is aided by leader sequence, chloroplast targeting peptide (cTP) that directs the proteins into the chloroplast. We identified the genes encoding chloroplast targeting proteins from chickpea (Cicer arietinum) and pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan and Cajanus cajanifolius) genomes. All the sequences were aligned, conserved motifs were identified and their phylogeny was deciphered. In this study, structural and functional features of chloroplast transit peptides of Ferritin-1 and its putative role in chloroplast tar-geting have been examined. The study would impart better understanding of targeting heterologous pro-teins to chloroplasts in pulses.

Keywords

Chloroplast Targeting Peptide, Domains, Ferritin-1, Motifs, Transgenes.

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