De-novo transcriptome assembly for discovery of putative microsatellite markers and transcription factors in black pepper (Piper nigrum)

Abstract

Black pepper (Piper nigrum L.) (2n= 52; Piperaceae), is a perennial, trailing woody flowering vine having global importance with widespread dietary, medicinal, and preservative uses. It is one of the highly traded high cost spice germplasms cultivated for its fruit. Unlike model species, the whole genome sequence information and genomic resources of black pepper are still unavailable in public domain. Crop production is highly affected by abiotic and biotic stresses. Hence transcriptome profiling has permitted a significant enhancement in discovery and expression profiling of genes and functional genomic studies in black pepper. Stress responsive transcriptomic data of various black pepper genotypes were obtained from public domain (SRA database, NCBI) for the de novo transcriptome assembly, identification of transcription factors and mining of putative simple sequence repeat markers. De novo transcriptome assembly was done with SOAP denovo-trans assembler, which generated 53690 transcripts. A total of 14005 transcription factors with BLAST and 39685 without BLAST hits were identified. A total of 4770 putative SSR markers were identified using de novo transcriptome assembly. Myeloblastosis (MYB) related proteins, Basic helix-loop-helix (BHLH), NAC, WRKY and ERF transcriptional factors found in this study are reported to be associated with plant tolerance against stress condition. These SSR markers can be valuable and facilitate advancements in genetic and molecular studies in the endeavour of better productivity of P. nigrum germplasm, especially in the era of rising abiotic stress.

Keywords

• Black pepper
• de novo assembly
• Markers
• RNA-sequence
• Transcription factors Black pepper (Piper nigrum L.) (2n = 52)
• a trailing woody flowering vine belongs to Piperaceae family. Genus piper has more than 1000 species (Jaramillo and Manos 2001). It is c