Frontiers of Agriculture and Food Technology

Frontiers of Agriculture and Food Technology ISSN 7295-2849 Vol. 8 (2), pp. 001-004, February, 2018. © International Scholars Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Detection of mesocarp oleoyl-thioesterase gene of the South American oil palm Elaeis oleifera by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction

Omorefe Asemota* and Farida Habib Shah

Department of Genetics, Faculty of Life Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Malaysia.

Accepted 20 July, 2017

Abstract

The thioesterase enzyme functions in lipid synthesis by cleaving the acyl-ACP bond and liberating the fatty acid. Thioesterases have been isolated from a number of plant sources. The gene for this enzyme was detected in Elaeis oleifera by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), cloned and sequenced and found to have considerable sequence similarity with other previously cloned thioesterases. Its highest homology is to the Brassica napus oleoyl-ACP thioesterase, 72% at the nucleotide level over the coding region examined, and 83% identity (90% positives) at the amino acid level.

Key words: Elaeis oleifera, mesocarp, oleoyl-ACP thioesterase, RT-PCR.