Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION AND IN SILICO ANALYSIS OF CAJANUS CAJAN LECTIN (CCL) GENE

Sudhir Kumar, Anurag Tripathi, Poonam Tiwari, Puja Singh, Amarjeet Kumar, Lianthan Zauva and Rekha Kansal

Abstract

In the current scenario of climate change, there is a resurgence of insect pests, which are causing heavy economic loss to the agricultural production globally. The worldwide use of chemical insecticides and pesticides has increased the cost of pest control and resulted in insecticidal hazards to biological organisms, pollution to the environment and increasing insect resistance. Therefore, the challenge today is to achieve higher and stable crop production with safe and eco-friendly strategies. Plants accumulate a set of defense proteins including lectins. Lectins are useful against various lepidopteran and homopteran insect pests. Realizing their importance, lectin gene was isolated and characterized from Cajanus cajan. The isolated Cajanus cajan lectin (CCL) gene (~825 bp) was cloned into BL21 DE3 pLysS competent cells of E. coli for protein expression studies. The expression was maximum at 2.0 and 2.50 mM IPTG concentration at 37ºC for 5 hrs. The in silico analysis of the lectin gene was done using different software and bioinformatic tools. The size of the protein was found to be around ~30 dDa. The size and the expression was confirmed by SDS-PAGE and western blotting. Thus, transferring these defense genes under the control of tissue specific promoters will be an effective tool for sustainable insect pest management programme.