Biocomputational characterization and evolutionary analysis of bubaline dicer1 enzyme.
Dicer, an ribonuclease type III type endonuclease, is the key enzyme involved in biogenesis of microRNAs (miRNAs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), and thus plays a critical role in RNA interference through post transcriptional regulation of gene expression. This enzyme has not been well studied in the Indian water buffalo, an important species known for disease resistance and high milk production. In this study, the primary coding sequence (5,778 bp) of bubaline dicer (GenBank: AB969677.1) was determined and the bubaline Dicer1 biocomputationally characterized to determine the phylogenetic signature among higher eukaryotes. The evolutionary tree revealed that all the transcript variants of Dicer1 belonging to a specific species were within the same node and the sequences belonging to primates, rodents and lagomorphs, avians and reptiles formed independent clusters. The bubaline dicer1 is closely related to that of cattle and other ruminants and significantly divergent from dicer of lower species such as tapeworm, sea urchin and fruit fly. Evolutionary divergence analysis conducted using MEGA6 software indicated that dicer has undergone purifying selection over the time. Seventeen divergent sequences, representing each of the families/taxa were selected to study the specific regions of positive vis-à-vis negative selection using different models like single likelihood ancestor counting, fixed effects likelihood, and random effects likelihood of Datamonkey server. Comparative analysis of the domain structure revealed that Dicer1 is conserved across mammalian species while variation both in terms of length of Dicer enzyme and presence or absence of domain is evident in the lower organisms.
School of Animal Biotechnology, Post Graduate Institute of Veterinary Education and Research, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana, Punjab 141004, India.
Jasdeep
J
Singh
School of Animal Biotechnology, Post Graduate Institute of Veterinary Education and Research, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana, Punjab 141004, India.
Chandra Sekhar
CS
Mukhopadhyay
School of Animal Biotechnology, Post Graduate Institute of Veterinary Education and Research, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana, Punjab 141004, India.
Jaspreet Singh
JS
Arora
Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Veterinary Sciences, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana, Punjab 141004, India .
Simarjeet
S
Kaur
Bubaline; Dicer; Phylogeny; Ribonuclease III Domain; Selection Pressure