Bioinformatic Analysis of Tubulin-beta Gene in Senecio scandens Buch. -Ham. ex D. Don

Beta-tubulin is an essential component in cell metabolism and function implementation. In this article, the Senecio scandens Buch. -Ham. ex D. Don beta-tubulin gene sequence was analyzed for its structure and function, as well as the relationship between them, through bioinformatics. The beta-tubulin nucleotide sequence was obtained from a formerly constructed full-length cDNA library of S. scandens, and was used as the query for a series of online bioinformatics tools. The S. scandens beta-tubulin gene was 1750 bp long, coding 448 amino acid residues, and shared 96% sequence identity with the beta-tubulin gene in Citrus maxima. This protein had a predicted molecular weight of 50.01 kD and theoretical isoelectric point of 4.83. The secondary structure of this protein mainly contained random coils and an alpha helix with two conserved domains. Its predicted tertiary structure was a relatively stable spherical structure. Signal peptide analysis revealed that the most probable sub-cellular locations of this protein were the cytoplasm, peroxisome and mitochondrial matrix space. This gene was uploaded to GenBank with the access number KF887495. This research lays a solid foundation for future studies on function mechanism revelation and application for genetically improving S. scandens. This study also provides some basic data for studies on plant beta-tubulin.