Abstract

ISOLATION, SEQUENCING AND IN SILICO COMPARATIVE MODELING OF ZEA MAYS β-GLUCOSIDASE

Santosh Kumar*, O. P. Verma and Nem Kumar Jain

Abstract

β-Glucosidase (β-D-glucoside glucohydrolases; EC 3.2.1.21) occur ubiquitously in plants, fungi, mammals and microorganisms. It constitutes a major group in glucoside hydrolase families and catalyses the hydrolysis of aryl and alkyl -D-glucosides such as cyanogenic glucosides, thioglucosides, glucose dissacharides or phenolic glycosides. In plants -glucosidases have been implicated in regulating various aspects of development, e.g., phytohormone activation, pathogen defense reactions, cell wall degradation in the endosperm during germination and lignifications. β-Glucosidase was isolated from roots, coleoptile and radicle of zea mays using SDS-PAGE. Each protein sample was sequenced using Edman’s Degradation method. Comparative modeling was performed to generate good quality models of each sequence using Geno3D and Swiss Model. The assessment of the generated three dimensional structure against structure verification tools PROCHECK showed that model generated by Geno3D was acceptable. The predicted model can be used in future studies.

Keywords: ?-Glucosidase, SDS-PAGE, Zea Mays, Comparative modeling, model.