EXPRESSION AND BIOINFORMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE ROP FAMILY GENE TaRAC IN WHEAT (TRITICUM AESTIVUM L.)

The Ras related C3 botulinum toxin substrate (RAC) play a key role in dealing with abiotic stresses in plants. The full-length open reading frame of a TaRAC was firstly cloned from wheat. Bioinformatic analysis and expression profile analysis of the TaRAC gene were carried out. The results indicated that the full-length open reading frame of TaRAC was 594bp which encoded 197 amino acid residues. The genomic TaRAC gene had no introns. The protein encoded by the TaRAC gene consisted of a small GTPase Rho family domain profile. Blast and phylogenetic analysis showed that the protein encoded by TaRAC shared the identity with RAC from corn (Zea mays L.). The result of qRT-PCR showed that expression of TaRAC gene was significantly tissue-specific. The result of qRT-PCR showed that TaRAC in the seeds was significantly higher than the expression of gene expression after soaking germination. The sensitivity of this gene to abscisic acid (ABA) significantly increased. TaRAC gene may play an important role in seed dormancy during germination, which could be used to improve the preharvest sprouting (PHS) resistance of wheat.