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Structure, expression profile, and evolution of the sucrose synthase gene family in peach (Prunus persica)

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Abstract

Key message

SUS gene family is comprised of six genes in peach, PpSus1 to PpSus6. PpSus1 to PpSus6 were categorized to represent three groups, group I, II, and III. PpSus showed conservative characteristics with Sus in other plants. PpSus exhibited distinct expression patterns in tissues at four development stages.

Abstract

Sucrose synthase (SUS) has been suggested to play a key role in plant sucrose metabolism with recent studies reporting that a small number of genes encoding different isozymes of Sus exist in most plant species. Despite this, information on genes encoding different isozymes of Sus in peach (Prunus persica) is scanty. In this study, we report the prediction, isolation, structural characteristics, phylogenetic connections and expression outline of six Sus genes in peach (PpSus1 to 6). The six PpSus genes were found distributed across scaffolds 1, 3, 5, 7, and 8. Analysis of the exons/introns revealed that PpSus genes contain multiple introns that range from 11 to 13 and displayed a high degree of conservation with corresponding Sus genes in other plant species. The comparative screening of motifs in PpSus proteins indicated high conservation in terms of number, width and order of motifs among PpSus proteins, which indirectly indicates that the six PpSus proteins are indeed members of the SUS family. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that PpSus2 to PpSus4 belonged to group II of the Sus family, PpSus5 and PpSus6 were clustered into group III, and group I contained only one peach gene (PpSus1) together with members from 10 other plant species. Analysis of expression levels of the six PpSus genes revealed that transcripts of PpSus1 were almost undetectable in leaves and in older phloem, while PpSus2 and PpSus4 were almost undetectable in flowers. The other three PpSus genes appeared differentially expressed in all tissues examined and were detected at different stages of tissue development. The results obtained from this study will be useful in selecting candidate PpSus genes for further functional analysis in the pathway of sucrose metabolism in peach and specifically in characterizing the knockout/knockdown mutants of PpSus genes.

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Abbreviations

DABF:

Days after full bloom

GDR:

Genome Database for Rosaceae

GSDS:

Gene Structure Display Server

GRAVY:

Grand average of hydropathicity

HMM:

Hidden Markov model

kDa:

Kilodalton

NG:

New group

PI:

Isoelectric point

qRT-PCR:

Quantitative real-time PCR

TAIR:

The Arabidopsis Information Resource

Sus:

Sucrose synthase

UTR:

Untranslated region

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Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by the Independent Innovation Scientific Research Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. CX(13)5018) and China Agriculture Research System (No. CARS-31). The authors also thank Prof. Jinggui Fang from Nanjing Agricultural University for providing valuable comments and suggestions for the manuscript.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Horticulture, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Horticultural Crop Genetic Improvement, Nanjing, 210014, Jiangsu, China

    Chunhua Zhang, Mingliang Yu, Ruijuan Ma, Zhijun Shen & Binbin Zhang

  2. Department of Agricultural Science and Technology, Kenyatta University, P.O. Box 43844-00100, Nairobi, Kenya

    Nicholas Kibet Korir

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  1. Chunhua Zhang
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  2. Mingliang Yu
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  3. Ruijuan Ma
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  4. Zhijun Shen
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Correspondence to Ruijuan Ma.

Additional information

Communicated by M. Stobiecki.

Electronic supplementary material

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Supplementary Fig.S1 The sucrose synthase domain (SS) in tertiary structures of all SUS family proteins in peach. Analysis of sucrose synthase domain in tertiary structures was performed using the online server ExPaSy Swiss-Model (http://swissmodel.expasy.org), which automatically causes amino acid sequences to form tertiary protein structures through homology-modeling tertiary structures. The structures in the circles at upper left corners are the thumbnail with size 3.23 × 3.23 cm of that for PpSus5 and PpSus6, respectively. Estimated per-residue inaccuracy is visualized using a color gradient from blue (more reliable regions) to red (potentially unreliable region).

Supplementary Fig.S2 The glycosyltransferase domain (GT) in tertiary structures of all SUS family proteins in peach. Analysis of glycosyltransferase domain in tertiary structures was performed using the online server ExPaSy Swiss-Model (http://swissmodel.expasy.org), which automatically causes amino acid sequences to form tertiary protein structures through homology-modeling tertiary structures. The structures in the circles at upper left corners are the thumbnail with size 3.23 × 3.23 cm of that for PpSus5 and PpSus6, respectively. Estimated per-residue inaccuracy is visualized using a color gradient from blue (more reliable regions) to red (potentially unreliable region).

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Zhang, C., Yu, M., Ma, R. et al. Structure, expression profile, and evolution of the sucrose synthase gene family in peach (Prunus persica). Acta Physiol Plant 37, 81 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-015-1829-4

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