Abstract
Amino acid transporters (AATs) play important roles in transporting amino acid across cellular membranes and are essential for plant growth and development. To date, the AAT gene family in soybean (Glycine max L.) has not been characterized. In this study, we identified 189 AAT genes from the entire soybean genomic sequence, and classified them into 12 distinct subfamilies based upon their sequence composition and phylogenetic positions. To further investigate the functions of these genes, we analyzed the chromosome distributions, gene structures, duplication patterns, phylogenetic tree, tissue expression patterns of the 189 AAT genes in soybean. We found that a large number of AAT genes in soybean were expanded via gene duplication, 46 and 36 GmAAT genes were WGD/segmental and tandemly duplicated, respectively. Further comprehensive analyses of the expression profiles of GmAAT genes in various stages of vegetative and reproductive development showed that soybean AAT genes exhibited preferential or distinct expression patterns among different tissues. Overall, our study provides a framework for further analysis of the biological functions of AAT genes in either soybean or other crops.
Highlights
Amino acids are the currency of nitrogen exchange in plants (Ortiz-Lopez et al, 2000) and are the second most abundant class of organic compounds found in the phloem sap after sucrose (Rentsch et al, 1998)
We identified an amino acid/auxin permease (AAAP) family, which consists of 153 GmAATs, including eight distinct subfamilies comprising amino acid permeases (AAPs), lysine, histidine transporters (LHTs), proline transporters (ProTs), GABA transporters (GATs), auxin transporters (AUXs), aromatic and neutral amino acid transporters (ANTs) and amino acid transporter-like (ATL) subfamilies (Table S1)
The great expansion of the AAT genes in soybean is probably the result of whole genome duplication (WGD) and tandomly duplications that occurred during evolutionary history of the family Fabaceae
Summary
Amino acids are the currency of nitrogen exchange in plants (Ortiz-Lopez et al, 2000) and are the second most abundant class of organic compounds found in the phloem sap after sucrose (Rentsch et al, 1998). Amino acid transporters (AATs) function in long distance amino acid transport and are essential participants in the resource allocation processes that support plant growth, development, and responses to pathogen and abiotic stresses (Tegeder, 2012). The AAT genes are distinguished by the presence of PF01490 (Aa_trans) and PF00324 (Aa_permease) domains. More than 63 distinct AAT genes have been identified in Arabidopsis by means of heterologous expression systems and database screening with known transporters (Rentsch et al, 2007). Emerging evidence identified 85 AAT genes in rice (Zhao et al, 2012), suggesting that this gene family is widely existed in higher plants. The AAT gene family in plants includes the amino acid/auxin permease (AAAP) family and the amino acid-polyamine-choline (APC) transporter family, which belong to the Characteristics of AAT Gene Family in Soybean
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