Sequencing and phylogenic study of aox2 gene in Anthemideae subfamily

Medicinal plants, today it is one of the most important agricultural products. Progress in the field of medicinal plants is one of the most important goals at the moment is the agricultural sector. Although medicinal plants in our country has been very little attention, but the increasing importance of these plants around the world, today, has attracted the attention of many parts of agriculture. The Anthemideae is considered as an important subfamily of Asteraceae which contains 5 important medicinal genera including Achillea sp., Matricaria sp., Tanacetum sp., Artemisia sp. and Santolina sp. Since genera belong to Anthemideae subfamily are rich in antioxidant components which be protected against ROS effects. Antioxidants including two groups named as enzymatic and non-enzymatic. Plant antioxidants have fewer side effects compared to synthetic ones. Alternative oxidas is one of the important enzymes in electron flow gradient to control alternative respiration and aox2 gene cods one of subunits of that enzyme. So, detecting and sequencing encoding genes of antioxidants seem essential. At the first, according to multiple alignments, the sequences of Arabidopsis as a model plant and other plants were elicited from gene bank information database. Specific degenerative primers were designed based on conserved amino acid sequences of AOX2 protein. Primers amplified a 300 bp fragments in all studied genera and subsequently were sequenced. To investigate the aox2 genes diversity among important genera of Anthemideae, average parwise distance using K2P and P-distance model and genetic diversity based on transition and transversion were calculated. Results showed the mentioned genera were well conserved for aox2 gene. Matricaria sp. and Achillea sp. have more similarity and also Artemisia sp. and Chrysanthemum sp. have more distance to each other. Obtained data from cluster diagram verified a more conserved volume between mentioned genera for aox2 gene.