Tuber development in potato Solanum tuberosum L molecular cloning sequence analyses and expression patterns of some crucial genes

Abstract

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is a major non-grain food crop grown all over the world and belongs to the Solanaceae family. Currently, the major objectives of global potato research include optimization of production by producing resistant varieties towards various challenging biotic and abiotic stresses to ensure both high yield and improvement of the nutritional values. In potato life cycle, tuberization is developmentally-regulated and depends on the activities of several interdependent complex processes. Considerable progress has been made towards understanding the multiple signaling pathways that lead to activation of many proteins/enzymes along with expression of many genes which are crucial at the different stages of tuber development. Tuberization is associated with sucrose, fructose and starch metabolism, calcium (Ca2+) signaling and reactive oxygen species (ROS). Tuberization in potato involves many constitutive and developmentally-regulated genes with multiple forms which still remain unknown. Likewise, an enzyme or protein could exist in different forms in a plant; therefore, we need to understand the corresponding genes/allelic variants and their expression patterns/regulations particularly at different stages of tuber development. Keeping in view, the focus was on molecular and biochemical studies on a few crucial enzymes namely Sucrose synthase (SuSy), Fructokinase (FRK), Calciumdependent protein kinases (CDPK) and Catalase (CAT) in an Indian potato cultivar. In silico approaches were also adopted for sequence analyses. Sucrose synthase (SuSy, EC 2.4.1.13) refers to a glycosyltranferase (GT) that plays a crucial role in sugar metabolism mainly in the sink tissues of plants. Here, we report isolation and characterization of a 2,668-bp cDNA encoding a distinct full-length SuSy4 form, corresponding to SUS I group gene family, from a commercially important Indian potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) cultivar, Kufri Chipsona-1 by RT-PCR using tuber total RNA.