GENETIC ALIGNMENT OF ANTHOCYANIN BIOSYNTHETIC GENES CLONED FROM VANDA HYBRID-PALE MAUVE (V. TERES × V. HOOKERIANA)

Anthocyanins are one of the major pigments responsible for flower colour. A Vanda hybrid-pale mauve (V. teres × V. hookeriana), is a prominent orchid cultivar used for landscape, showing light mauve colour floret. In this study, we cloned and sequenced four gene fragments involved in anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway including phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL), chalcone synthase (CHS), flavanone 3-hydroxylase (F3H) and dihydroflavonol 4-reductase (DFR) from the Vanda hybrid. The obtained lengths of the nucleotide sequences of PAL, CHS, F3H and DFR fragment were 697, 538, 536 and 445 bp, which were encoded to the putative proteins of 231, 178, 178 and 148 amino acid (aa), respectively. The nucleotide blast analysis of the four genes revealed significant homologies with some other orchid species. The PAL gene was 93% and 90% identical to PAL of Phalaenopsis × Doritaenopsis hybrid orchid (Accession No. AY281156) and Bromheadia finlaysoniana orchid (Accession No. X9997), respectively. The CHS gene was 91% identical to CHS of Phalaenopsis hybrid cultivar (Accession No. DQ089652) while the DFR gene was 89% identical to that of B. finlaysoniana orchid (Accession No. AF007096) and the putative F3H gene was 89% identical to B. finlaysoniana orchid (Accession No. X89199).