Isolation, Identification Similarity and Qualitative Expression of Metallothionein Gene in IR-Bagendit Rice (Oryza sativa)

Metallothionein (MTs) is an enzyme that plays a role in the binding of metals in plants. Various types of rice have been known to contain MTs and IR-Bagendit rice leaves have the highest MTs protein content compared to other rice varieties. However, MTs coding gene in IRBagendit rice variety is still unknown. OsRAC1 gene is reported as the down-regulator of MTs and there is an analogous gene for MTs-like gene using RAP1 and RAP2 primers in various plants. This study aimed to isolate, identification of similarity, and analysis of qualitative expression of MTs gene in IR-Bagendit rice as compared to Inpari, IR-36, and IR-34. The steps of this research were DNA isolation, PCR in OsRAC1 gene, RNA isolation and cDNA reverse transcription using primer RP1 and RP2, and agarose gel electrophoresis. Amplification quality of OsRAC1 gene in IR-Bagendit, Inpari, IR-36, and IR-34 showed the same result. Qualitative expression of MTs by reverse transcription showed that IR-Bagendit has the highest MTs-like gene compared to other samples.