PATHOGEN INDUCED TRANSCRIPTIONAL CHANGES IN SUMOYLATION GENES OF TOMATO

Tomato is the most important vegetable cultivated worldwide. This plant responds to several biotic and abiotic stresses under favorable conditions and regulates different post-translational modifications, producing defense mechanisms at the sub-cellular level. An important type of modifier is SUMO which is a conserved protein in tomato plants. SUMO gene has a significant role to give an expression in the form of resistant genes during biotic stress, especially bacterial response. For this purpose, two tomato varieties were selected viz. Rio Grande and Roma, infected with the Pseudomonas syringae. RNA was extracted from an infected plant visualized on agarose gel, synthesized the cDNA template from RNA samples and SUMO genes (SUMO 01, SUMO 02, SUMO 03, and SUMO 04) expression of these cDNA tempelates are confirmed through gel electrophoresis. The data were recorded at 0, 8, 16, and 24 hrs during post pathogen infection. According to the results, all the SUMO genes expressed more in Reo Grande variety infected by bacterial pathogen, showing good bands on gel electrophoresis in quantitative form, representing that Reo Grande is a more resistant variety as compared to the Roma found less quantified gel bands. SUMOylation machinery genes are tissue-specific in terms of pathogenic response. Furthermore, these findings have valuable to other scientists in focusing further studies on the SUMOylation mechanism on tomato plants in response to biotic stress.