Sequence analysis of cereal sucrose synthase genes and isolation of sorghum sucrose synthase gene fragment

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) is an important staple food for about 500 million people in semi arid regions of the world. Recently, sorghum has been identified as a main plant species for the comparative analysis of grass genomes and as a source of beneficial genes for agriculture. Recent studies have shown that there is conservation of gene order at the chromosome level in rice, sorghum and maize. Therefore, a high-resolution alignment between these genomes will be needed to utilize them constructively for sorghum gene discovery. Sorghum sucrose synthase gene fragment was amplified by primers designed at conserved exon position of cereal sucrose synthases. Sorghum sucrose synthase gene fragment I shared homology with other cereal sucrose synthase at the exon positions 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Sorghum sucrose synthase fragment II shared homology from exon 2 to 6. Key words: Sorghum, sucrose synthase, multiple sequence alignment.