Expression analysis of F-box/WD40 genes in legumes

In nature, plants are subjected to variety of abiotic stress factors that greatly affect their development and productivity. As a result of global climate change, salinity is an abiotic stress factor that makes agricultural land unusable day by day and temperature threatens plant growth. The production of legumes, which are an important part of human nutrition, is threatened by various stress factors. For this reason, the physiological and molecular responses of plants such as beans, chickpeas, and barrel medic to stress factors have been analyzed in many studies. In this thesis, the molecular responses of protein genes, which are the subunits of the SCF complex, and contain F-box motif and WD40 repeats together, to temperature and salinity stress were examined for the first time. Only 6 F-box/WD40 proteins were identified in common beans, chickpeas, and barrel medic from legumes whose genome sequences were completed. As a result of the bioinformatics analysis of the legume F-box/WD40 proteins, the 3-dimensional structures and protein-protein interactions of the proteins were examined, and it was determined that the 3-dimensional structure was highly preserved among the species, and the protein-protein interaction was mostly provided by the proteins in the ubiquitin proteasome system, as expected. After the common bean, chickpea, and barrel medic seeds were germinated in vitro, bean and chickpea plants were applied on the 15th day and barrel medic plant on the 30th day with 38oC temperature and 180 mM salinity stress. At the end of the stress application, total RNA isolation and cDNA synthesis were performed sequentially from the root, stem and leaf tissues, and gene expression analysis was performed with qPCR. In conclusion, gene expression analysis of putative legume Met30 and WD40/YVTN proteins containing F-box/WD40 motifs found as a result of bioinformatics analysis suggests that they have direct roles in the response to temperature and salinity stresses. By looking at sequence similarities and expression analysis profiles, it was concluded that the role of putative legume Met30 and WD40/YVTN proteins in abiotic stress conditions is related to the Cdc34/SCF complex.