Iman Yousefi Javan
University of Torbat Heydarieh, Iran
Biography
Abstract
One of the most valuable and irreplaceable ones all over the world is Saffron. Saffron is the dried stigmas of Crocus sativus L. (Iridaceae) and the most precious and expensive spice. Due to the presence of water soluble carotenoid derivatives in saffron which are known to have antioxidant, anticarcinogenic and antitumors activities, this spice is often used for medicinal purposes. Saffron has three major carotenoid derivatives crocin, picrocrocin and safranal that are responsible for its intense color, bitter taste and aroma, respectively. In the pathway for making crocin, it possesses many enzymes which are catalyzes the reactions and are coded by related key genes. This research aim was to identify, isolate, and characterize LycB, CCD, CI, ZDS, PSY, IPP genes that was done by comparing with other genomes and protein sequences of these genes in other plants. Genomic DNA and cDNA was extracted from stigma organs, after designing specifc primers of these genes, using reference nucleotide sequence and carrying out PCR for gene amplifcation, the product of reaction was electrophoresed on the agarose gel. The resulting bands were isolated and characterized from the saffron genome. All exon and introns were identified from the crocetin component genes. After comparison between the sequenced fragments of nucleotide and the reference genome revealed, and also blasting sequences, we observed that there is a very similar resemblance between the crocetin encoding genes with few nucleotide differences between fragments (point mutations) which did not make a difference, in amino acids and ultimately in proteins.