MOLECULAR AND BIOCHEMICAL STUDIES ON COCCULUS PENDULUS FROM THE EASTERN DESERT

Abstract

The current study deals with molecular and biochemical investigations of Cocculus pendulus collected from the Eastern Desert. This plant is reported to have good medicinal values in traditional system of medicine. To achieve the main goal of study, abiotic and biotic factors of the study area are defined through climatic data, soils of the study area including their physical, chemical properties and elemental composition together with the plant molecular, biochemical and chemical studies. Therefore, collection of representative soil samples beneath C.pendulus together with plant samples (stems and leaves) of C.penduluswas carried out from three major wadis adjacent to Gebel Elba, Eastern Desert. Examination of climatic data revealed the hyperarid conditions of the study area. Soil analysis dictates that soils beneath C.pendulus grown in the studied wadis are sandy, slightly to moderately saline, impoverished in nutritive elements and non-polluted. No information about the genome of the plant under study in Egypt is available.So, DNA fingerprinting of C.pendulus young leaves was carried out using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) technique with four primer combinations. The obtained results reveal a total number of 228 bands with an average of 57 bands for each primer combination, of which 61 bands were polymorphic (26.8%) ranging in size from 59-570 bp. The number of amplicons /primer pair ranged from 48 (E-AGG/M-CAC) to 72 (E-AAC/M-CAG) while the number of polymorphic amplicons varied from 13 to 21 with polymorphism percentage of 22.03-29.17 %. Thus the average number of polymorphic fragments/combination was 15. In this regard, the SUMMARY 142 combinationE-AGG/M-CACwas more efficient, this is confirmed by computing the discriminating power (D). Also, the AFLP marker gives a complete informative and highly discriminative picture about C.pendulus as shown by polymorphism information content (PIC) = 0.99. The elemental composition of leaves and stems reveals that the macronutrients N, P and K contents are generally higher in leaves relative to stems regardless of the sites in which C.pendulus is grown. Likewise, the leaves content of Ca is about 2 folds that of stems except for site No. 1of wadi yahmeib where Ca content is 4 folds compared to stems. The micronutrient elements in leaves and stems could be ranked into 2 distinct descending orders;Fe, B, Mn, Zn, Cu and Ni (for leaves) and Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn, B and Ni (for stems), also Fe, Mn, B and Mo are higher in leaves relative to stems and the converseis true for Cu and Zn. With regard to heavy metals, the studied plant is not polluted, reflecting the safe environmental conditions in whichC.pendulus is grown. Considering the biochemical components of the aerial parts of C.pendulus, data show that the moisture content varies within narrow limits being 2.67% in leaves and 5.45 % instems. Ash content is relatively higher in leaves, being in the ranges of 10.4 to 14.29 % and 4.82 to 6.6 % in stems. Total carbohydrates range from 49.97 to 59.99 % and 38.91 to 43.82 % in leaves and stems, respectively. Total protein is relatively higher in leaves (12.52 to 13.85%) relative to stems (5.22-7.96 %). Total lipids constitute 0.5 to 1.0 % and 0.35 to 1.15 % of leaves and stems, respectively. Crude fiber content varies widely in leaves (9.0-15.0%) while being much higher in stems (39.6-42.2 %). Total amino acids showed that aspartic, glutamic and leucine are the most predominant amino acids in leaves while the