Molecular characterization of LMW glutenin genes from Taeniatherum Nevski.

We characterized 45 LMW glutenin genes from three diploid species of Taeniatherum using 63 primer combinations, designed according to 264 genes reported in wheat and related species. The genes had 909-1,059 bp nucleotides and 301-351 amino acids. The deduced peptides shared similar structures with LMW-m proteins of wheat. The 45 genes shared 77.2-99.7% identities in peptide sequence among each other and 60.0-82.0% identities to proteins from wheat and related species. They were divided into five types according to the N-terminals, starting with METSCIP-, METSRVP-, METGRIP-, METGSIP- and VETSCIP-. The last three and some other structural domain variations were not reported previously in the Triticeae. Thirty-three genes encoded full mature proteins with intact ORFs, whereas the other 12 were pseudogenes with incomplete ORFs, in-frame stop codons or frame-shift mutations. Phylogenetic analysis showed that orthologous genes from Taeniatherum were more similar to those in the B and D genomes than in the A genome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]