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Comparative Analysis of Lycopene Gene in Green and Purple Coloured Brassica oleracea Varieties

T Balasaravanan*, Juby Elsa Joseph

The carotenoid pigmented fruits and vegetables have high nutritional values as they are rich in vitamin A and antioxidant properties. There are numerous coloured fruits and vegetables and plenty of researches have been done on them determining their gene expression levels in different species and even at different parts of a plant as well. The present study aimed the comparative analysis of lycopene genes in purple colour cabbage and green colour cabbage. The mRNA from both green and purple cabbage leaves were isolated and converted to cDNA. Then their lycopene cDNAs were amplified with suitable set of primers and these were then sequenced. The mutations observed in both the sequences were negligibly small. So, the carotenoid pigment will be due to some other factor. From their DNA sequences, amino acid sequences were obtained, and homology modelling provided suitable structure for the proteins obtained from both green and purple coloured cabbage. Then phylogenetic analysis was done with different lycopene amino acid sequences of species like tomato, papaya, corn, citrus and Arabidopsis determined that the isolated lycopene gene from the cabbage varieties are more similar to lycopene �?²-2 cyclase gene (LCY-B2). From this study, it can be concluded that lycopene is present not just in coloured vegetables but also in green leafy vegetable like cabbage. According to the spectrophotometric determination of lycopene content in both varieties of cabbage, it was found that purple coloured cabbage leaves have more lycopene content than that of green leafy cabbage.