In silico identification and annotation of drought responsive candidate genes in Solanaceous plants

An in silico analysis was undertaken to identify drought responsive candidate genes in solanaceous plants like potato, chilli, tomato, eggplant and etc., using NCBI database. Drought tolerant plants counter the drought by producing various enzymes and transcription factors through genes associated with drought tolerance. The drought stress responsive genes were validated using Arabidopsis thaliana as reference species. The stress responsive unigenes were identified from STIFDB v2.0 database and subjected for BLAST analysis to identify related homologous sequences from Solanum taxid using NCBI database. A total of 795 stress responsive unigenes were identified for drought stress among which 109 drought responsive unigenes were found in solanaceous taxid with sequence identities (ID) or homology of more than 80 per cent. Based on Bulk Data Retrieval (BDR) from The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR), the Gene Ontology analysis for GO functional categories has revealed that, in cellular component category, genes assigned to the other intracellular components (20.37%) accounted for largest group followed by other cytoplasmic components (19.05%) and genes of chloroplast (11.77%). In biological process category, largest group of genes belong to other cellular processes (25.89%) followed by other metabolic processes (21.89%) and response to abiotic or biotic stimulus (12.44%). In Molecular functional categorization, 11.59% of genes have transferase activity; protein binding activity (10.90%); other enzymic activities (17.27 %) and other binding activities (17.95 %). The information on the drought responsive candidate genes can be used for identification and isolation of drought responsive genes for utilization in drought tolerance breeding in solanaceous crops