Bioinformatic analysis of the phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathway in Gomphrena globosa for the study of gene expression levels

Abstract

Gomphrena globosa is a plant that produces different secondary metabolites that have an interest due to the biological activity they present, for example: anti-inflammatory, cytotoxic, antioxidant and antimicrobial activity. The main metabolites that have been found in in vitro cultures are simple phenols and flavonoids. The biosynthetic pathway of these compounds is well known, which is as a tool for genetic manipulation when there is enough information about their structural genes. However, there is not enough information about its regulation, which opens the field to investigate the correlation between the corresponding gene expression levels and the regulation of the pathway in G. globosa, and the applications in metabolic engineering. Therefore, a bioinformatic analysis was carried out to identify possible candidate enzymes that exert regulation or that could be branch points in the pathway. Nucleotide sequences were obtained from highly related enzymes, as there are no reported sequences for G. globosa enzymes at the moment; however the available information for these related molecules allowed selecting a group of six enzymes as regulation nodes in the biosynthetic pathway of phenylpropanoids in G. globosa. The oligonucleotides designed by sequence homology gathered the design considerations to be used in further gene expression analysis and they are an important contribution to the genetic and metabolic regulation research in G. globosa.