Indian Society of Genetics & Plant Breeding
Finger millet (Eleusine coracana L.) commonly known as
ragi is an orphan cereal crop having significant climatesmart stress adaptation system. Apart from various abiotic
stresses worldwide, heat stress is the major limiting
constraint for crop yield and the loss of crop yield due to
heat stress is increasing every year. Hence, to generate
better heat tolerant crop plants there is a need to mine
superior alleles. In this regard, efforts were made to isolate
and characterize role of small heat shock protein gene
HSP17.8 from finger millet. Here, we obtained an EST of
having Hsp20 domain based on the expression analysis
under heat stress and identified complete gene using
homology-based analysis. The obtained gene was named
as EcHSP17.8 based on its molecular weight. The complete
Open Reading Frame (ORF) of EcHSP17.8 is of 489 bp with
peptide length of 162 aa. Expression analysis of this gene
in finger millet revealed its maximum expression in roots
tissue. This gene was found to be induced by heat (42oC),
desiccation, NaCl (250 mM), mannitol (200 mM) and
oxidative stress; however maximum upregulation was
observed under heat stress up to 40 folds. Expression
analysis of this gene in 16 finger millet genotypes under
heat stress revealed its maximum expression after 2h which
remained upregulated up to 4h showing it as early
responsive gene under heat stress. As this gene is well
characterized for stress tolerance in other crops, the alleles
of HSP17.8 from crop like finger millet can be used as better
candidate for generating heat tolerant crop plants.
Keywords: Heat stress, chaperon, finger millet, open reading frame, ramachandran plot.
Year: 2018
Volume: 78
Issue: 1
Article DOI: 10.5958/0975-6906.2018.00011.1
Print ISSN: 0019-5200
Online ISSN: 0975-6906
Ramakrishna Chopperla info_circle
Sonam Singh info_circle
R. S. Tomar info_circle
Sasmita Mohanty info_circle
Suphiya Khan info_circle
Nanja Reddy info_circle
Amolkumar U. Solanke info_circle
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