[en] BACKGROUND: Maize is a major staple food crop globally and contains various concentrations of vitamins. Folates are essential water-soluble B-vitamins that play an important role as one-carbon (C1) donors and acceptors in organisms. To gain an understanding of folate metabolism in maize, we performed an intensive in silico analysis to screen for genes involved in folate metabolism using publicly available databases, followed by examination of the transcript expression patterns and profiling of the folate derivatives in the kernels of two maize inbred lines.
RESULTS: A total of 36 candidate genes corresponding to 16 folate metabolism-related enzymes were identified. The maize genome contains all the enzymes required for folate and C1 metabolism, characterized by highly conserved functional domains across all the other species investigated. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that these enzymes in maize are conserved throughout evolution and have a high level of similarity with those in sorghum and millet. The LC-MS analyses of two maize inbred lines demonstrated that 5-methyltetrahydrofolate was the major form of folate derivative in young seeds, while 5-formyltetrahydrofolate in mature seeds. Most of the genes involved in folate and C1 metabolism exhibited similar transcriptional expression patterns between these two maize lines, with the highest transcript abundance detected on day after pollination (DAP) 6 and the decreased transcript abundance on DAP 12 and 18. Compared with the seeds on DAP 30, 5-methyltetrahydrofolate was decreased and 5-formyltetrahydrofolate was increased sharply in the mature dry seeds.
CONCLUSIONS: The enzymes involved in folate and C1 metabolism are conserved between maize and other plant species. Folate and C1 metabolism is active in young developing maize seeds at transcriptional levels.
Disciplines :
Biochemistry, biophysics & molecular biology
Author, co-author :
Lian, Tong ; Université de Liège - ULiège > TERRA Research Centre ; Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China. liantong9111@163.com
Chen, Maoran; Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China. chenmaoran@qq.com
Li, Jinglai; Beijing Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Beijing, People's Republic of China. ljlai108@sina.cn
Liang, Qiuju; Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China. liangqj06@163.com ; National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic Improvement (NFCRI), Beijing, People's Republic of China. liangqj06@163.com
Liu, Fang; Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China. tbliufangcau@163.com
Meng, Hongyan; Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China. mhy1984@126.com
Xu, Bosi; Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China. xbs2000@126.com
Chen, Jinfeng; Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China. chenjinfengjiujiu@163.com ; Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, People's Republic of China. chenjinfengjiujiu@163.com
Zhang, Chunyi; Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China. zhangchunyi@caas.cn ; National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic Improvement (NFCRI), Beijing, People's Republic of China. zhangchunyi@caas.cn
Jiang, Ling; Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China. jiangling@caas.cn ; National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic Improvement (NFCRI), Beijing, People's Republic of China. jiangling@caas.cn
Language :
English
Title :
Genome-wide identification and transcriptional analysis of folate metabolism-related genes in maize kernels.
We thank Professor Jianbing Yan of Huazhong Agricultural University for providing the maize seeds and Professor Xiaoduo Lu of Qilu Normal University for the guidance of planting. This work was financially supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (grant no. 2013CB127003 to C.Z.).
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