Leaves of Moringa oleifera Are Potential Source of Bioactive Compound β-Carotene: Evidence from In Silico and Quantitative Gene Expression Analysis

• Published in: Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 28; no. 4; p. 1578
• Main Authors: Muteeb, Ghazala, Aatif, Mohammad, Farhan, Mohd, Alsultan, Abdulrahman, Alshoaibi, Adil, Alam, Mir Waqas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 07.02.2023; MDPI
• Subjects: Antibiotics; Antiinfectives and antibacterials; Arabidopsis - genetics; Arabidopsis thaliana; beta Carotene; Bioactive compounds; Biological activity; Biosynthesis; Bixa orellana; Brassica napus; Brassica napus - genetics; Brassica rapa; Brassica rapa - genetics; Carotene; Carotenoids; Computer applications; Desaturase; Developing countries; DNA methylation; Flavonoids; Gene expression; Gene Expression Profiling; Genes; Genomes; genomics; Herbal medicine; Infections; LDCs; Leaves; Maximum likelihood method; Medicinal plants; Microorganisms; Moringa oleifera; Moringa oleifera - genetics; Nutritive value; Personal health; Phylogeny; Phytoene synthase; Plant Extracts; Plant Leaves; Plant species; Plants; Plants, Medicinal - genetics; Polyphenols; Proteins; Rape plants; Seeds; Shoots; transcriptomics; Wound healing; β-Carotene; β-carotene genes; United States > US; Oklahoma; β-carotene genes; RNA and cDNA analysis; real time PCR; transcriptomics; bioactive compounds; genomics; gene expression; moringa oleifera
• ISSN: 1420-3049; 1420-3049
• DOI: 10.3390/molecules28041578

is rich in bioactive compounds such as beta-carotene, which have high nutritional values and antimicrobial applications. Several studies have confirmed that bioactive-compound-based herbal medicines extracted from the leaves, seeds, fruits and shoots of are vital to cure many diseases and infections, and for the healing of wounds. The β-carotene is a naturally occurring bioactive compound encoded by zeta-carotene desaturase (ZDS) and phytoene synthase (PSY) genes. In the current study, computational analyses were performed to identify and characterize ZDS and PSY genes retrieved from (as reference) and these were compared with the corresponding genes in , , and . The BLAST results revealed that all the plant species considered in this study encode β-carotene genes with 80-100% similarity. The Pfam analysis on β-carotene genes of all the investigated plants confirmed that they belong to the same protein family and domain. Similarly, phylogenetic analysis revealed that β-carotene genes of belong to the same ancestral class. Using the ZDS and PSY genes of as a reference, we conducted qRT-PCR analysis on RNA extracted from the leaves of , , and . It was noted that the most significant gene expression occurred in the leaves of the studied medicinal plants. We concluded that not only are the leaves of an effective source of bioactive compounds including beta carotene, but also the leaves of , and can be employed as antibiotics and antioxidants against bacterial or microbial infections.