Journal of Oil Palm Research Vol. 26 (4) December 2014, p. 308-316

DIFFERENTIALLY EXPRESSED TRANSCRIPTS RELATED TO HEIGHT IN OIL PALM

INTAN NUR AINNI MOHAMED AZNI*; PARAMESWARI NAMASIVAYAM*; HO CHAI LING*; SHARIFAH SHAHRUL RABIAH SYED ALWEE** and MOHAMAD ARIF ABD MANAF‡

ABSTRACT

A subtractive cDNA library was constructed using MPOB Planting Series 1 (PS1) population to isolate differentially expressed transcripts associated with height increment in oil palm. After differential screening, 98 clones were identified to be potentially positive with cDNA inserts ranging from 250 to 1000 bp. A total of 123 sequences generated and low quality sequences ≤ 20 were eliminated using Phred program to assess the sequence quality and determine the accurate consensus sequence. Contig assembly by CAP3 program generated 51 contigs and four singletons (55 unigenes). Blast search showed 49 unique sequences had significant match to various plant species in the GeneBank database with E-value ≤ 1e- 5, and four sequences showed no significant similarity. Gene ontology analysis output from Blast2GO program revealed that the sequences encoding for auxin responsive protein, circadian clock-associated protein1, zinc-finger protein and basic leucine zipper protein were potentially associated to dwarfism. The genes were identified based on their putative functions in regulating height in plants, particularly in growth hormone biosynthesis such as auxin (Aux/IAA), gibberellins (GA) and brassinosteroids (BR).

KEYWORDS:


* Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.

** FELDA Biotechnology Centre, PT 23417, Lengkuk Technology, Persiaran Technology, Techpark@enstek, 71760 Bandar Enstek, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia.

‡ Malaysian Palm Oil Board, 6 Persiaran Institusi, Bandar Baru Bangi, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia.
E-mail: arifma@mpob.gov.my