Abstract:
Puroindoline a(
Pina) and
puroindoline b(
Pinb) are the major genes controlling grain hardness in wheat.According to the conserved regions of
Pinb gene reported,one pair of specific primers was designed and used to amplify one new Pinb allele from genomic DNA of young leaves of
Aegilops tauschii(DD).Sequence analysis indicated that it was 447 bp in size,encoding 148 amino acid residues which corresponded to the structure of PinB protein,with the tryptophan motif of WPTKWWK and five disulphide bonds formed by ten cysteines,which were specific to PinB in cereal crop.Compared with
Pinb-D1a from
Triticum aestivum cv.Capitole,this new
Pinb allele in
Ae.tauschii contained 14 amino acid mutations,among which there was one mutation adjacent to the tryptophan motif(Val66Phe),sharing 93.3% homologies in nucleotide sequence and 90.5% homologies in amino acid sequence,respectively.The expression of
Pinb in grain endosperm was verified by RT-PCR and Western Blot analysis.The results showed that
Ae.tauschii contained grain hardness-controlling gene quite different from that of
T.aestivum and further study on this gene would benefit our understanding of the mechanism underlying the formation of wheat kernel texture.