Discovery of EST-SSRs Markers in Lentil (Lens culinaris) under Cold Stress

Development and improvement of lentil breeding programs to deal with adverse environmental factors in comparison to other legumes has more challenges due to poor pool of genetic resources. EST-SSR (EST-Simple Sequence Repeats) markers are one of the most commonly used molecular markers in many plant breeding programs due to polymorphism in genes coding regions. Hence, in the present study, for the development of EST-SSR markers, assembly process of RNA sequences of lentil under cold stress and normal condition was used. In order to apply cold stress, lentil plants treated at 4 °C condition. Total RNA was extracted from plant samples and was sequenced. 8905 microsatellite locations in 7211 unigene derived from lentil RNA sequences data was identified that 1293 unigene of them contained more than one SSR marker location. The most abundant type of EST-SSR marker was found to be of single nucleotide type. In this study, A/T, AG/CT and AAG/CTT motifs had the highest frequency among the one, two and three nucleotide motifs, respectively. The results of blast of unigene containing SSR showed that 80% of the unigenes had a similar record in the non-redundant protein database. The functional annotation of the unigenes showed that unigene containing SSR marker are subordinate to the critical stress-responsive terms such as binding, cell, cell parts and metabolic. Also, according to the results of this study, it can be stated that most of the identified EST-SSR markers were found in genes that play an important role in responding to cold stress, and UTR regions is often possible position. Hence, more analysis of these areas in candidate gene transcripts in response to cold stress is more important