Characterization of Brassica Thaumatin-like Genes Related to Stress Resistance

Biotic and abiotic stresses are major concern for the Brassica which is very important vegetable group worldwide and enhancement of resistance against stresses exploiting stress resistance related genes offers the most efficient approaches to address this concern. Among the stress resistance related genes, thaumatin-like genes are very important for enhancement of resistance in Brassica. In this study, 3,429 ESTs generated from the full-length cDNA library of Brassica rapa cv. Osome were well annotated using bioinformatics tools and carried out searches using the BLASTX and BLASTN engines at nucleotide level. From this analysis, 140 sequences were found to show homology with biotic stress related genes where 2 thaumatin-like genes were identified. Then another 18 same family genes were collected from the Brassica database and all these sequences were analyzed and compared with other published pathogenesis related thaumatin-like genes and found a high degree of homology. In the expression analysis, significant expression of these genes was observed in different organs of healthy Chinese cabbage plant. In addition, several genes showed significant expression after cold, salt, drought and ABA stress treatments. All these data revealed that these genes may be involved in plant resistance against biotic and abiotic stresses.