ANALYSIS OF PROTEIN FEATURES AND IN SILICO EXPRESSION PROFILES OF CaSWEET GENE FAMILY IN CHICKPEA (Cicer arietinum)

Abstract

In this study, the general characteristics of the sucrose transporters, namely SWEET (sugars will eventually be exported transporter) have been analyzed in the chickpea (Cicer arietinum). Our results indicated that the lengths of CaSWEETs were varied from 230 to 296 amino acids, while their molecular weights ranged from 25.67 to 33.47 kiloDalton. Next, our analyses of the biochemical features revealed that CaSWEETs are hydrophobic, most of them are base (the isoelectric points > 7) and recognized to be stable in the test tube. Our TargetP prediction showed that the majority of CaSWEETs could be distributed on the secretory pathway. Of our interest, the expression profiles of CaSWEETs were checked in the normal and abiotic stress conditions based on the available transcriptome atlas. In the normal condition, most of CaSWEETs were highly expressed in at least one tissue. Interestingly, CaSWEET19 was noted as the most exclusively expressed gene in the whole 11 tissues in the normal condition. We also found that four CaSWEET genes were responsive to drought and salt stresses in root tissues. Among them, CaSWEET05 was the most up-regulated gene in drought stress (2.43-fold) and CaSWEET17 was the most induced gene in salt stress (2.17-fold).