Isolation, structural modeling and evaluation of strictosidine synthase gene expression involved in the biosynthesis pathway of indole alkaloids in Papaver somniferum

Strictosidine synthase protein is one of the key enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of plant alkaloids. To date, no information on strictosidine synthase sequences of Papaver somniferum has been recorded in various databases. Therefore, the aim of this study was to isolate the complete ORF sequence of strictosidine gene, bioinformatics analysis of this gene and study its expression in different organs of Papaver somniferum and Papaver bracteatum. The consensus sequence of strictosidine gene with 1179 bp was obtained after identifying the consensus sequence resulting from assembling similar readings in related species. Also, the strong sequence conservation was observed in the terminal parts of the strictosidine synthase enzyme. Due to the isolation of the full length of the consensus sequence, the prediction of its third protein structure was performed using the comparative method obtained from the Modeller program and its molecular dynamics was predicted and simulated using the GROMACS software. The results of prediction and evaluation of the third structure indicated the structural stability of the predicted model. Finally, the expression of strictosidine synthase gene expression in the leaf, stem and capsule tissues of Papaver somniferum was 12, 4.09 and 1.3 times more than the root as a control, respectively. Also, in Papaver bracteatum, the root had the highest expression (5 times than the capsule) and the stem (3 times than the capsule) and the leaf (2.5 times than the capsule) took the next ranks. The results of this study provide the possibility of STR gene manipulating with the aim of engineering the pathway of Papaver alkaloids.