Metabolic and Transcriptional Reprogramming in Developing Soybean (Glycine max) Embryos

Metabolites

Eva Collakova⁴  Delasa Aghamirzaie¹  Yihui Fang⁴  Curtis Klumas¹  Farzaneh Tabataba²  Akshay Kakumanu³  Elijah Myers¹  Lenwood S. Heath² 

[1] Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; E-Mails:;Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; E-Mails:;Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA; E-Mail:;Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; E-Mails:

关键词: central carbon and nitrogen metabolism;    plant metabolic engineering;    RNA sequencing;    seed storage compounds;    soybean;    systems biology;    transcriptomics;    untargeted and targeted metabolomics;   

DOI  :  10.3390/metabo3020347

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Soybean (Glycine max) seeds are an important source of seed storage compounds, including protein, oil, and sugar used for food, feed, chemical, and biofuel production. We assessed detailed temporal transcriptional and metabolic changes in developing soybean embryos to gain a systems biology view of developmental and metabolic changes and to identify potential targets for metabolic engineering. Two major developmental and metabolic transitions were captured enabling identification of potential metabolic engineering targets specific to seed filling and to desiccation. The first transition involved a switch between different types of metabolism in dividing and elongating cells. The second transition involved the onset of maturation and desiccation tolerance during seed filling and a switch from photoheterotrophic to heterotrophic metabolism. Clustering analyses of metabolite and transcript data revealed clusters of functionally related metabolites and transcripts active in these different developmental and metabolic programs. The gene clusters provide a resource to generate predictions about the associations and interactions of unknown regulators with their targets based on “guilt-by-association” relationships. The inferred regulators also represent potential targets for future metabolic engineering of relevant pathways and steps in central carbon and nitrogen metabolism in soybean embryos and drought and desiccation tolerance in plants.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.