Evidence for Molecular Evolutionary Conservedness of Small Heat-Shock Protein Sequence in Solanaceaeous Crops Using in silico Methods

Drought and heat contribute to much of the yield decline in agricultural lands all over the world. The basic physiological responses developed against drought and heat stress overlie each other, as; both these stresses eventually lead to dehydration of the cell and to osmotic imbalance. To cope with abiotic stresses, it is necessary to understand plant responses to stresses that disturb homeostatic equilibrium at the cellular and molecular level. Although there has been remarkable progress in this with development of microarray-based expression profiling methods (together with genomic sequence data), understanding on ways to employ these data to engineer plants with improved stresstolerance is still at a nascent stage. However, these data can be used for discovering genes, functional microsatellites and regulatory elements using in silico methods. In this context, single nucleotide repeat marker sequences have been identified which is associated with small heat-shock protein sequence (sHSP) for heat tolerance in Capsicum annuum. These sHSP sequences have some structural features in common; its characteristic is that it is homologous and highly conserved. These sequences have been analyzed for molecular evolutionary conservedness in solanaceaeous crops and have been found to have a single nucleotide repeat sequence and a highly conserved sHSP sequence.