Genome-wide Identification and Annotation of metabolite producing Gene Clusters in Rice Genome

Abstract

Plants are able to produce numerous types of metabolites, which can be utilized for drug development, and various other purposes like resistance to a pest, abiotic stresses, and disease. Recently it was discovered that genes, which are responsible for the production of these metabolites, are arranged in operon-like gene clusters. These gene clusters are co-expressed and regulated by the same set of regulatory elements. Identification of such gene clusters has tremendous application in synthetic biology. Advancement in genome information, genome mining, and analysis tools have placed us at a commanding position that will provide us a technique to modify the gene for large production of the specialized chemicals. Rice being stapled food for the majority of the human population is chosen in the present study to find out the gene clusters responsible for the production of secondary metabolites. We have reported 39 gene clusters on 12 chromosomes of Oryza sativa group Japonica. Few of the selected metabolite producing gene clusters is a saccharide, lignin, terpene, alkaloid etc. There were several gene clusters for putative metabolites, which we have annotated in this study.