Investigation of Orthologous Sequences that can be Used to Investigate the Nutraceutical Value of Rubus

Gallic acid, a secondary metabolite found in the head of developing Rubus prickles has the potential to contribute to the field of medicine as a natural treatment for certain cancers. To this end, the investigation of the cell cycle genes is important when determining the effects gallic acid has on plant and stomach gastric cancer (AGS) cell line. The activity across the plant and AGS cells can be compared between each species by employing qPCR a technique that allow us to investigate the expression of cell cycle genes. In addition, as we investigate cell cycle gene expression in both plant and animals simultaneously it is imperative that we ensure that our control genes are directly comparable to control genes, and furthermore that are in fact the genes we expected. To insure the results from qPCR are the expected genes we designed primers that were abled to amplify our expected genes in both species using a single set of primers. We then verified that the amplicons by cloning and sequencing the relevant ESTs. Therefore, both our control genes and cell cycle genes amplified from plant and animal tissues using gene targeted primers were genes we predicted, and are orthologous to each other. The investigation of the cell cycle genes being affected by gallic acid will provide specific results to indicate gallic acid’s potential to halt the cell cycle in certain cancers and thus will help us work toward providing evidence that compounds extracted from Rubus are not only more nutritious but also have nutraceuticals value.