Maria Beihaghi; Ahmad Reza Bahrami; Abdolreza Bagheri; Mohammad Zare Mehrjerdi
Abstract
Studies on the genes contributing to the seed filling in chickpea and its protein content might be valuable in engineering plants with seeds of a higher nutritional value. A gene of interest is phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (pepck), encoding a protein with a substantial role in the gluconeogenesis ...
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Studies on the genes contributing to the seed filling in chickpea and its protein content might be valuable in engineering plants with seeds of a higher nutritional value. A gene of interest is phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (pepck), encoding a protein with a substantial role in the gluconeogenesis pathway. In the present study, the protein content (percentage) was measured in a number of cultivated chickpea genotypes, followed by comparison of the expression levels of pepck gene at different stages of seed filling in some of the genotypes. This study aims at revealing the relation between pepck transcript level with protein content of chickpea seeds which might, in the longer term, end at protein quality improvement of the crop through the gene manipulation procedures. The results which were verified by Real Time-PCR and Western blot techniques in four genotypes of plant, showed that, the amount of pepck expression was significantly higher at the stage of seed fillingthan at other stages in all of genotypes and the lowest levels of expression belonged to flowering and seed formation and the PEPCK protein level was higher in the high protein genotypes compared to the low protein genotypes.
