Identification and Expression Analysis of Wheat (Triticum aestivum) Whirly Gene Family
SUN Yue1, YANG Hui-Yu2, ZHU Wen-Gen2, WANG Xiao-Yan1,*, TANG Yi-Miao2,*
1 College of Agriculture, Yangtze University, JingZhou 434000, China; 2 Hybrid Wheat Research Institute, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing 100000, China
Abstract：Whirly family is a kind of plant-specific transcription factors, which have extensive and complex biological functions in both the nucleus and organelles. Because of the rotating appearance of its quaternary structure, it is called Whirly protein, and the corresponding gene is named Whirly gene. This family plays an important role in plant growth and stress response. In order to explore the function of wheat (Triticum aestivum) Whirly family, the basic characteristics of TaWHY gene family members were analyzed by bioinformatics method, and their responses to various stresses were verified by qPCR. The results showed that there were 6 members in TaWHY family, named TaWHY1-A, TaWHY1-A-1, TaWHY1-D, TaWHY2-A, TaWHY2-B and TaWHY2-D, respectively, which were distributed on 6 chromosomes of wheat, and all the member sequences contained introns. The results showed that TaWHYs protein instability index was 30~60, and the average coefficient of hydrophilicity was less than 0, which indicated that wheat Whirly protein was stabled in nature and belongs to hydrophilic protein. TaWHY protein was distributed in mitochondria, chloroplast, nucleus and cytoplasm. The secondary structure of TaWHY protein was mainly alpha helix and random curl, and there were 2 three-dimensional structure models. Transcriptional data analysis showed that TaWHY gene showed different tissue expression patterns and was regulated by different abiotic stresses. The results of qPCR showed that the relative expression of TaWHY1-A gene was significantly up-regulated under low temperature stress conditions(P<0.05), which could respond to low temperature stress. The results of this study can provide reference for further functional verification and mechanism analysis of TaWHY.
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