Analysis of drought tolerant characteristic of Boea hygrometrica by establishing its evolutionary

relationship with commercial plants

Introduction

Resurrection plants are plants that can survive extreme dehydration condition. Boea hygrometrica is
generally used as a model plant to study the characteristics of resurrection plant(1). Resurrection
plants constitute a unique cadre within the angiosperms that is, they alone have the remarkable
capability to survive the complete dehydration of their leaves and roots. The majority of plants,
including all our crops, can rarely survive tissue water potentials of less than −4 Mpa. Resurrection
plants can, in contrast, survive tissue water potentials of −100 MPa. The ability to desiccate and
resurrect vegetative tissues is considered a primal strategy for surviving extensive periods of
drought. Desiccation tolerance (DT) has played a major role in plant evolution(2). The drought
tolerant characteristic of Boea hygrometrica is analysed with commercial plants such as Chara
vulgaris ,Sorgum vulgaris, Brassica napus, Arabidopsis thaliana, Zea mays, Oryza sativa, Nicotiana
tobaccum, Beta vulgaris and Triticum aestivum. Studies have shown that desiccation tolerance is
primarily protoplasmic(4). Proteome studies were carried out using leaves of the resurrection plant
Boea hygrometrica to reveal proteins that were differentially expressed in response to changes in
relative water content in order to understand the mechanism of dissection tolerance. Fourteen
dehydration responsive proteins were analyzed by mass spectrometry. Eight proteins were classified
as playing a role in reactive oxygen species scavenging, photosynthesis and energy metabolism(3).

RATIONALE

Recently, extracts of resurrection species and particular secondary metabolites were reported to
display biological activities of importance to medicine, with antibacterial, anticancer, antifungal, and
antiviral activities, rendering them possible candidates for the development of novel drug
substances as well as for cosmetics. Most resurrection species are so far virtually unexplored with
respect to their primary and secondary metabolic complements. Furthermore, from the limited
number of resurrection plants with well-studied , there are only few examples of well-characterized
metabolites with biological activities. In many cases, the reported biological activities are of crude
total extracts in which the compound that is presumably responsible for the observed activity is
mixed with other compounds that are co-extracted (5).With this following, the resurrection plant
which has the protein sequence that are drought tolerance can be analysed and the sequence can
be compared with the commercial plants like Chara vulgaris ,Sorgum vulgaris, Brassica napus,
Arabidopsis thaliana, Zea mays, Oryza sativa, Nicotiana tobaccum, Beta vulgaris and Triticum
aestivum.

OBJECTIVE

 To determine the sequence similarilty between the commercial plant species and
Boea hygrometrica using sequence alignment by CLUSTAL W
 To develop a phlyogenetic tree for the aligned sequence using MEGA 6

REFERENCES

1. "Resurrection Plant". Faculty.ucc.edu. Retrieved 2012-01-30.

2. Lihong Xiao ,2015,”The resurrection genome of Boea hygrometrica: A blueprint for
survival ofdehydration”,pnas.1505811112.
3. Guojiang Jiang et al,2007,”Proteome analysis of leaves from the resurrection plant
Boea hygrometrica in response to dehydration and rehydration”, Planta 225:1405-
1420.
4. Renhua Wu ,Lili Wang, Zhi Wang, Haihong Shang, Xia Liu, Yan Zhu,Dongdong Qi, Xin
Deng,2008,” Cloning and expression analysis of a dirigent protein gene from the
resurrection plant Boea hygrometrica”,Progress in Natural Science 19,347-352.
5. Tsanko S. Gechev, Jacques Hille,Herman J, Woerdenbag, Maria Benina, Nikolay
Mehterov, Valentina Toneva, Alisdair R. Fernie,Bernd Mueller-Roeber ,2014, “Natural
products from resurrection plants: Potential for medical applications”, Biotechnology
Advances, Volume 32, Issue 6.