Identification and Bioinformatics Analysis on Phosphatidylcholine Diglyceride Choline Phosphotransferase Family Genes in Plants

Phosphatidylcholine diglyceride choline phosphotransferase (PDCT) is involved in the synthesis of seed triglyceride (TAG) in plant, catalyzing the transfer between phosphatidylcholine (PC) and diacylglycerol (DAG), and the loss of the PDCT activity reduces significantly the accumulation of seed polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). In this study, taking advantage of public available genomes of six oil crops (peanut, rape, soybean, cotton, sesame and sunflower), two staple food crops (rice and maize) and one aquatic plant (Chinese lotus), we identified in total 20 PDCT orthologues using bioinformatics, and further investigated into physical and protein chemical property, chromosome distribution, phylogenetic evolution, gene structure and promoter sequence. Our results showed that the PDCT family members have conserved domains and gene structures, as well as stable protein properties and structures, implying certain evolutionary conservation among them. In addition, copy numbers of PDCT were significantly different in tested plant species, while crop plants and Arabidopsis had one single copy, oil crops almost have at least 2 copies. Furthermore, the existence of many transcription core promoter elements and photo-response cis-acting elements in the promoter regions of these identified PDCT genes indicated that the expression of PDCT genes is likely affected by multiple developmental and environmental stress signals. In sum, this study provided a bioinformatics reference for further study on the potential application of PDCT family genes in crop breeding.