Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Agriculture - Department of Genetics

Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) is one of the oldest cultivated oil crops to mankind, and it is cultivated in different areas worldwide including Africa and Asia. One of the reaseons behind sesame-low seed yeild is capsules dehiscence before and during full-maturation, leading to seed loss and shattering before harvest. Therefore, seeds retention in capsules is considered an important trait especially for mechanized production.The aim of the current work is to minimize yield loss in sesame via controling polygalacturonase gene expression levels in sesame plants using RNAi technology. Based on conserved regions of the polygalacturonase gene sequences from dicotyledon plants at database, degenerate primers were designed to amplify partial sequences.Sequence analysis revealed that the amplified partial sequences corresponded to polygalacturonase gene, with high homology to published PG gene sequences in the database. Using RACE technique, we cloned the full-length polygalacturonase gene from false-septa tissues in sesame.The clone polygalacturonase gene was 1671 bp long, with the first 46 nucleotide as 5{u2019}UTR, and the coding reagion consisting of 464 amino acids (Accession no. LC279244). The newly cloned gene (SiPG1) shares a 95.52% similarity to previously predicted PG sequences from sesame.Translation analysis revealed that SiPG1 was 22 amino acid longer than the predicted counterpart. And the majority of those changes were more concentrated at the 5{u2019} end of the gene

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