Title

Analysis of MAP kinase MPK4/MEKK1/MKK genes of Carica papaya L. comparative to other plant
homologues

Authors

Muhammad Hanam Hamid^1,2, Lina Rozano¹, Wee Chien Yeong^1*, Janna Ong Abdullah^2* & Noor Baity Saidi².

Affiliation

¹Biotechnology and Nanotechnology Research Centre, Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia;

²Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia;

Email

cywee@mardi.gov.my;

janna@upm.edu.my ;

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received December 30, 2016; Revised February 17, 2017; Accepted February 17, 2017; Published February 28, 2017

Mitogen-activated protein kinase 4 (MPK4) interacts with the (Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase 1) MEKK1/ Mitogenactivated protein kinase kinase 1 (MKK1)/ Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 2 (MKK2) complex to affect its function in plant development or against pathogen attacks. The KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) network analysis of Arabidopsis thaliana revealed close interactions between those four genes in the same plant-pathogen interaction pathway, which warrants further study of these genes due to their evolutionary conservation in different plant species. Through targeting the signature sequence in MPK4 of papaya using orthologs from Arabidopsis, the predicted sequence of MPK4 was studied using a comparative in silico approach between different plant species and the MAP cascade complex of MEKK1/MKK1/MKK2. This paper reported that MPK4 was highly conserved in papaya with 93% identical across more than 500 bases compared in each species predicted. Slight variations found in the MEKK1/MKK1/MKK2 complex nevertheless still illustrated sequence similarities between most of the species. Localization of each gene in the cascade network was also predicted, potentiating future functional verification of these genes interactions using knock out or/and gene silencing tactics.

Keywords:

MPK4; MEKK1; MKK1; MKK2; MAP Kinase Cascade; Papaya

Citation

Hamid et al. Bioinformation 13(2) 31-41 (2017)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.