Genome-wide identification and characterization of Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase genes family in wheat (Triticum aestivum)

Abstract

Background: Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) is a central enzyme in glycolysi, we performed genome-wide identification of GAPDH genes in wheat and analyzed their structural characteristics and expression patterns under abiotic stress in wheat.

Results: A total of 22 GAPDH genes were identified in wheat cv. Chinese spring; the phylogenetic and structure analysis showed that these GAPDH genes could be divided into four distinct subfamilies. The expression profiles of GAPDH genes showed tissue specificity all over plant development stages. The qRT-PCR results revealed that wheat GAPDHs were involved in several abiotic stress response.

Conclusions: Wheat carried 22 GAPDH genes, representing four types of plant GAPDHs (gapA/B, gapC, gapCp and gapN). Whole genome duplication and segmental duplication might account for the expansion of wheat GAPDHs. Expression analysis implied that GAPDHs play roles in plants abiotic stress tolerance.

Keywords: Abiotic stress responses; Expression profiles; Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase; Triticum aestivum; Wheat.

Fig. 1

Molecular phylogenetic analysis of GAPDH gene families in Arabidopsis thaliana, Triticum aestivum, Aegilops tauschii, Triticum urartu and Triticum turgidum. The rooted Neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree of GAPDH genes was inferred from the amino acid sequence alignments of GAPDHs by MEGA5.1 with Neighbor-joining method under default parameters. The values on the tree represent bootstrap confidence values inferred from 1000 replicates

Fig. 2

Structure analysis of GAPDH gene families in Arabidopsis thaliana, Triticum aestivum, Aegilops tauschii and Triticum urartu. Gene structures of GAPDHs analyzed by GSDS (http://gsds.cbi.pku.edu.cn/). Exons are shown as green boxes, introns are shown as thin lines, and UTRs are shown as blank boxes

Fig. 3

Structure of GAPDH proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana, Triticum aestivum, Aegilops tauschii, Triticum urartu and Triticum turgidum. The line represents the coding sequence and 12 motifs are shown. The amino acid sequences of GAPDH were used as an input of MEME. The total number of input GAPDH and GAPN genes is 42 and 9 respectively

Fig. 4

Expression profiles of GAPDHs in different tissues. a Expression profiles of Arabidopsis thaliana GAPDHs in different tissues. b Expression profiles of barley GAPDHs in different tissues. c Expression profiles of wheat GAPDHs in different tissues. d Expression profiles of wheat GAPDHs in different tissues at different development stages. Number 1–9 mean germination, seedling growth, tillering, stem elongation, booting, inflorescence emergence, anthesis, milk development, dough development and ripening stages, respectively

Fig. 5

Expression analysis of GAPDH genes under abiotic stresses. a Expression heatmap of GAPDHs under abiotic stresses in Arabidopsis. The microarray data was downloaded from Arabidopsis eFP Browser. Heatmap was plot by Heatmapper. b Expression heatmap of GAPDHs under abiotic stresses in wheat. The data came from qRT-PCR analysis with 2^–ΔΔCt method. Heatmap were generated with MeV v4.9. The relative expression levels were intuitively reflected in the heatmap with the gradient color green/black/red (low to high)