Abstract
The AAAP (amino acid/auxin permease) genes encode a large family of transporters. A few members of the AAAP family have been characterized in Arabidopsis thaliana and rice (Oryza sativa). However, little is known about AAAP genes in maize (Zea mays). Therefore, we performed a systematic bioinformatics analysis to characterize all AAAP genes in maize, which included analysis of the genome sequence, conserved protein domains, chromosomal locations, phylogenetic relationships, gene duplications, and gene expression profiles. In this study, seventy-one ZmAAAP genes were identified and named ZmAAAP01 to ZmAAAP71. The number of AAAP genes in maize is more than the number in Arabidopsis thaliana (43) and in rice (58). We found a higher percentage of AAAP gene duplications in the maize genome, which contributed to the expansion of the AAAP gene family. Furthermore, segmental duplications played a major role in the AAAP gene expansion in maize. The AAAP genes are unevenly distributed on the 10 maize chromosomes, and 31 of them are distributed within 12 clusters on segmental chromosomes. Both the EST analysis and transcriptome data indicated that most ZmAAAP genes exhibited abundant expression patterns, suggesting diverse and novel functions of AAAP gene family in maize. The results presented here provide useful information for further functional analysis of the AAAP gene family in maize.
Highlights
Amino acids serve as primary sources of organic nitrogen for the growth of many eukaryotic cells [1]
The predicted lengths of the ZmAAAP open reading frame (ORF) ranged from 396 bp (ZmAAAP19) to 3807 bp (ZmAAAP67) and the predicted molecular weights ranged from 13.96 kDa (ZmAAAP19) to 140.21 kDa (ZmAAAP68)
The results of this study display the analysis of the genome sequence, classification, chromosomal locations and conserved motifs of the 71 ZmAAAP members, along with their expression profiles
Summary
Amino acids serve as primary sources of organic nitrogen for the growth of many eukaryotic cells [1]. Some amino acids even allow adaptation to environmental change, especially to those causing organismal stress [4] These functions require the presence of transport systems that catalyze uptake into, and release from specialized cell types [5]. A large number of gene families of amino acid transporters have been identified, such as the amino acid/polyamine/ choline (APC) family [6,7], the amino acid transporter gene family (AAT) in rice [8], the lysine-histidine-like transporter family (LHT) in Arabidopsis [9] etc These genes are widely distributed in eukaryotic organisms (ranging from yeast and plants to insects and mammals), and many of these genes have important biological functions in eukaryotes
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