Phylogenetic Relationship of Intron and Exon Regions of ACC Gene in some Wild Barley Species from Iran

Barley belongs to the Poaceae which is the largest monocotyledon family. Plastid single-copy gene acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACCase) is the first step in the biosynthesis of fatty acids and therefore, it is used to study the phylogenetic relationships, evolutionary and systematic of grasses. In this study, for the first time, phylogenetic relationship of eight species of Hordeum genus from Iran including: H. murinum, H. marinum, H. brevisubulatum, H. vulgare ssp. spontaneum, H. vulgare ssp. distichon, H. vulgare ssp. tworow, H. vulgare ssp. Hexastichon, H. bulbosom were investigated using gene-specific primers acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC1). By using various bioinformatics tools the number of exons and introns in the species and their sequences were calculated. Three phylogenetic trees were obtained using exons, introns and whole sequence. Phylogenetic tree of the whole sequence of the ACC gene divided Iranian species of Hordeum in two main groups, which was very similar with the phylogenetic tree obtained by exon sequences. H. spontaneum, H. distichon, H. tworow, H. hexastichon were clustered in the same subgroups in all three phylogenetic trees. Moreover, H. bulbosom, H. brevisubulatum, H. murinum were grouped together. Since ACC1 gene is a valuable source for phylogenetic analysis in the Triticeae tribe, the results of this study can find reasonable and important taxonomy relationships among Hordeum species from Iran.