GENETIC CHARACTERIZATION OF SELECTED GENERAS OF FAMILY Poaceae ON THE BASIS OF rps14 GENE

Abstract

The Poaceae is a cosmopolitan family comprised of 700 generas and approximately 10,000 species. In Pakistan 158 genea, 429 species and 26 tribes have been reported. This family is well known for its commercial and medicinal importance. Fourteen species of Poaceae were collected from Quaid-e-azam University, Islamabad in order to find out the phylogenetic position by using Ribosomal protein subunit 14 (rps14) gene. Rps 14 gene was successfully sequenced and amplified for each species and dendogram was constructed using molecular evolutionary genetic analysis (MEGA7) tool which divided the species into two main clades showing a narrow genetic diversity of 0.02 with well supported bootstrap values. Moreover, the pairwise distance ranged from 0.006 to 0.178 with a mean value of 0.059. By using Iterative Threading Assembly Refinement (I-TASSER), three dimensional protein models of 14 different species of Poaceae having the highest C-score value were predicted. The 3D protein models were quite good that can be reliably used for application of different bioinformatics tools. Further studies can focus on the examination of morphology, anatomy, phylogenetics with multiple marker system and evolution of these and other variable characters within this diverse family.