M.S.KuruvinashettyShivanand Lathe Rahul2016-10-182016-10-182007http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/80769genetic diversity. Identification of novel regulatory genes involved in abiotic stress tolerance and allele mining would lead to better and quicker solution for improving stress tolerance in crop plants. Structural and functional analysis of genomic DNA of DREB2 transcription factor including allele mining was done in sorghum. Sorghum DREB2 (SbDREB2) genomic clone was found to be 1591 bp long with an internal intron of 747 bp between 68 and 815 bp. SbDREB2 encodes a putative protein of 262 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of 28.88 KDa and has potential four casein kinase II phosphorylation sites, five protein kinase C phosphorylation sites and one tyrosine kinase phosphorylation site. Multiple sequence alignment of SbDREB2 with other DREB genes revealed presence of single, highly conserved, functional 58 amino acids long AP2/ERF domain. Its features show that it could act as a phospoprotein. The comparative modeling of AP2/ERF domain revealed a 3 stranded -sheet and an -helix antiparellel to -sheet. The 14th valine and 19th glutamic acid positioned on -sheet were conserved within AP2/ERF domain indicating their critical role in DNA binding. Phylogenetically SbDREB2 is closely related to DREBs of monocotyledonous. The CaMV35SThesis