Abstract

RHIZOBITOXINE ENHANCES NODULATION BY INHIBITING ETHYLENE SYNTHESIS OF BRADYRHIZOBIUM ELKANII FROM LESPEDEZA SPECIES: VALIDATION BY HOMOLOGY MODELING AND MOLECULAR DOCKING STUDY

Ramachandran Vijayan1, Pitchai Palaniappan2, Tongmin SA2, And PadmanabanElavarasi3, and Natesan Manoharan*

¹*Department of Marine Science, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirapalli 620 024, India.

²Department of Agricultural Chemistry, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, Chungbuk361-763, South Korea.

³Department of Chemistry, Periyar University, Salem 636 011, India.

ABSTRACT

Bradyrhizobium elkanii produces rhizobitoxine, a plant toxin which causes chlorosis in soybeans. Recent studies has shown that rhizobitoxine plays an important role for establishing symbiosis between legumes and Bradyrhizobium elkanii. rhizobitoxine is an inhibitor of ethylene biosynthesis thereby enhances the nodulation. As there are no experimentally determined structure for the B. elkanii reported in the literature, Therefore, we have modeled the protein structure by homology modeling and also docked with potent inhibitor rhizobitoxine having the GOLD score of 67.21. This binding allowed us to predict that this rhizobitoxine might be capable of inhibiting B. elkanii and thus enhancing nodulation. A significant finding of this study provides new insight into the structure and functional features are helpful to design the site-directed mutagenesis experiments and to govern the rhizobial infection of legumes.

Keywords: rhizobitoxine, protein modeling, in slico docking, symbiosis.