Phylogenetic and Physicochemical Study of CBF Gene in Different Plant Species

Abstract

Temperature changes and environmental stresses are the most important non-living factors in disturbing the favorable conditions that cause metabolic disorders in plant cells. In this regard, CBF systems have the most important role in tolerating cold stress in plants. It is very important to study and compare the sequence of CBF gene and determine the phylogenetic and evolutionary relationships of this gene in different plants using bioinformatics tools. In this study, by examining the amino acid sequence of protein expressed from CBF gene in durum wheat (tetraploid), from Plantcare, NCBI and EXPASY databases and also to investigate the relationships of this gene in forty different plant species, their homology from in terms of protein similarity with MEGA5, UPGMA and Bioedit software was determined. Bioinformatics analysis showed that the nucleotide length of this gene among the forty plants studied above varied from 453 nucleotides for pine to 759 nucleotides for rice. It also showed that the length of this gene in hexaploid wheat plant contains 214 amino acids. The results of analysis of variance showed high diversity between plants. The evolutionary matrix was calculated based on Poisson correlation and showed that there is the highest distance (4.324) and the lowest distance (0.007) between the protein sequences of CBF gene in plants. Based on the results of cluster analysis by UPGMA method, the protein sequence of this gene was divided into three groups. AP2 and ABRE regions were observed in the initial sequence of CBF gene and also the presence of CAAT box in most plants. The existence of genetic diversity of CBF gene in different plants confirms that the differences in gene expression and differences in protein form are due to environmental effects, which in the long run have epigenetic effects and genetic modification of that gene in that plant.