Abstract
BackgroundSeed germination is essential to crop growth and development, and ultimately affects its harvest. It is difficult to breed soybeans low in phytic acid with a higher seed field emergence. Although additional management and selection could overcome the phytate reduction, the mechanisms of seed germination remain unknown.ResultsA comparative proteomic analysis was conducted between two low phytic acid (LPA) soybean mutants (TW-1-M and TW-1), both of which had a deletion of 2 bp in the GmMIPS1 gene. However, the TW-1 seeds showed a significantly lower field emergence compared to the TW-1-M. There were 282 differentially accumulated proteins (DAPs) identified between two mutants at the three stages. Among these DAPs, 80 were down-accumulated and 202 were up-accumulated. Bioinformatic analysis showed that the identified proteins were related to functional categories of oxidation reduction, response to stimulus and stress, dormancy and germination processes and catalytic activity. KEGG analysis showed that these DAPs were mainly involved in energy metabolism and anti-stress pathways. Based upon the conjoint analysis of DAPs with the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) previously published among three germination stages in two LPA mutants, 30 shared DAPs/DEGs were identified with different patterns, including plant seed protein, beta-amylase, protein disulfide-isomerase, disease resistance protein, pyrophosphate-fructose 6-phosphate 1-phosphotransferase, cysteine proteinase inhibitor, non-specific lipid-transfer protein, phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase and acyl-coenzyme A oxidase.ConclusionsSeed germination is a very complex process in LPA soybean mutants. The TW-1-M and TW-1 showed many DAPs involved in seed germination. The differential accumulation of these proteins could result in the difference of seed field emergence between the two mutants. The high germination rate in the TW-1-M might be strongly attributed to reactive oxygen species-related and plant hormone-related genes. All these findings would help us further explore the germination mechanisms in LPA crops.
Highlights
Seed germination is essential to crop growth and development, and affects its harvest
These results showed that carbohydrate metabolism had a close relationship with germination trait of low phytic acid (LPA) soybean mutants. These findings were in agreement with the results from other plants [43, 44]. We found that these differentially accumulated proteins (DAPs) had no special regulation trend in the TW-1-M with high germination rate, which means that each protein had a separate regulating way for seed germination process
KEGG analysis showed that these DAPs were mainly related with energy metabolism, such as carbohydrate metabolism and fat metabolism, and anti-stress pathways
Summary
Seed germination is essential to crop growth and development, and affects its harvest. Soybean seeds are susceptible to internal damage during their germination and development stages due to their high content of protein and oil. It is essential to plant seeds with high-emergence rates to obtain a satisfactory yield. The germination, vigor and emergence rates could be significantly reduced under unfavorable environmental conditions (such as drought, freezing and salt stress) during seed germination and development stages [1,2,3,4] or with the changes in seed chemical components (such as phytic acid content and fatty acid composition) [5,6,7]. The internal damage of seeds has rarely been focused on according to the changes of nutritional and anti-nutritional factors [5, 7].
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