IN-SILICO CHARACTERIZATION OF EST SEQUENCES FOR CELLULOSE SYNTHASE IN SUGARCANE

Sugarcane is an economically important perennial grass of genus Sacchrum. Cellulose is important product of sugarcane and is synthesized by cellulose synthase. Since the complete genome sequence of sugarcane is not available, studies on ESTs can be a valuable source of information for the genes coding for important traits. We aim to contribute to more complete understanding of economically important process of cellulose production which has multifarious uses in industry. In this study we have downloaded ESTs for cellulose synthase in sugarcane. These have been assembled and annotated.438 GO terms were retrieved which means on an average 8 GO terms per contigs were obtained. A maximum of 15 GO terms were found for two contigs. Furthermore EST-contigs sequences were categorized according to the GO vocabularies i.e.Molecular Function, Cellular Component and Biological Process with 120, 118 and 200 GO terms obtained for each category respectively. All the EST-contigs showed involvement in starch and sucrose metabolism.