Abstract:
Palmitoyl-ACP thioesterase (PTE) involves in the synthesis of palmitate (Cl6:0) from
palmitoyl-ACP (16:0-ACP) in fatty acid biosynthesis pathway. The significant role of
PTE in this pathway is the basis for the isolation of the gene from Chlorella sp. The
total RNA extracted from Chlorella sp. was reverse transcribed with KPN-Tl 7 oligo
dT primer by using M-MLV reverse transcriptase. Four heterologous forward primers
designed from the conserved regions of the PTE gene were used to amplify the
corresponding 3 '-end regions of the gene. PCR amplification successfully produced
five putative DNA fragments with size ranging from 600 bp to 1300 bp. These five
putative fragments were cloned into pGEM-T vector and the plasmids extracted from
the positive recombinant clones were sent for DNA sequencing to determine their
nucleotide sequences. Analysis of sequencing results by searching the GenBank
database using BLAST programme revealed that there were no homology to the target
PTE gene. Instead, the sequences show homology to other genes, such as eukaryotic
translation elongation factor 1 alpha 1 (XP _ 001696568), aspartate aminotransferase
(AAN76499), hypothetical protein (CAN76227), and SocE (AAF91388).
