玉米AQP基因家族的鉴定及比较分析

quaporins (AQPs) are members of a superfamily of integral membrane proteins and play a vital role in the transportation of small molecules across membranes. However, little is known about AQP genes in maize (Zea mays). Therefore, we performed a systematic bioinformatics analysis to characterize all AQP genes in maize, which included analysis of the genome sequence, conserved protein domains, chromosomal locations, phylogenetic relationships, gene duplications, and gene expression profiles. In this study, 44 non-redundant AQP genes were identified and named ZmAQP01 to ZmAQP44. The number of AQP genes in maize was greater than in Arabidopsis (35) and they were classified into four subfamilies, including PIP, TIP, NIP, and SIP. All 44 ZmAQP genes are unevenly distributed on the 10 maize chromosomes and 12 gene pairs (24 genes) among them were localized to segmentally duplicated regions without tandem duplication. The transcriptome data indicated that most ZmAQP genes exhibited abundant expression patterns, suggesting diverse functions of AQP gene family in maize. Moreover, the results of qRT-PCR for SIP and NIP subfamilies indicated that most ZmAQP genes in SIP and NIP subfamilies were expressed in all the seven tissues, which also showed functional divergence of ZmAQP genes during plant development. The information and data provided in the present study is useful for further functional analysis of the AQP gene family in maize growth and development.?????