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An expression analysis of 57 transcription factors derived from ESTs of developing seeds in Maize (Zea mays)

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Abstract

Maize seeds are an important source of food, animal feed, and industrial raw materials. To understand global gene expression and regulation during maize seed development, a normalized cDNA library, covering most of the developmental stages of maize seeds, was constructed. Sequencing analysis of 10,848 randomly selected clones identified 6,630 unique ESTs. Among them, 57 putative transcription factors (TFs) were identified. The TFs belong to seven different super-families, specifically 17 Zinc-finger, 13 bZIP, 8 bHLH, 6 MADS, 7 MYB, 3 Homedomain, and 3 AP2/EREBP. The spatial and temporal expression of the TFs was analyzed by semi-quantitative RT-PCR with representative tissue types and seeds at different developmental stages, revealing their diverse expression patterns and expression levels. One-third (19) of the maize TFs was found their putative orthologs in Arabidopsis. Similar expression patterns were observed in both maize and Arabidopsis for the majority of orthologous pairs (15 out of 19), suggesting their conserved functions during seed development. In conclusion, the systematic analysis of maize seed TFs has provided valuable insight into transcriptional regulation during maize seed development.

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Abbreviations

DAP:

Days after pollination

TF:

Transcription factor

Y2H:

Yeast two-hybrid

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Binbin Huang and Liangliang Zhou for technical support with sequencing analysis. This work was supported by National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (30671303, 30900900), Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation (101024), Ministry of Education of China (NCET-06-0435, 206048), Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2006AA10Z148, 2006AA10A107, 2009CB118400), Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (05PJ14049, 05QMX1424, 09DZ2271800), and Education Commission of Shanghai Municipality (05ZZ02), Shanghai Education Foundation (04SG40).

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  1. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Bio-Energy Crops, School of Life Sciences, Shanghai University, No. 333 Nanchen Road, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Guifeng Wang, Hui Wang, Jia Zhu, Jing Zhang, Xiaowei Zhang, Fei Wang, Yuanping Tang, Bing Mei, Zhengkai Xu & Rentao Song

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  1. Guifeng Wang
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  2. Hui Wang
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  3. Jia Zhu
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Correspondence to Rentao Song.

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Communicated by M. Jordan.

G. Wang and H. Wang have contributed equally to this work.

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Wang, G., Wang, H., Zhu, J. et al. An expression analysis of 57 transcription factors derived from ESTs of developing seeds in Maize (Zea mays). Plant Cell Rep 29, 545–559 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-010-0843-7

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