Structural and functional insights into the candidate genes associated with different developmental stages of flag leaf in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Sheetal Mehla; Upendra Kumar; Prexha Kapoor; Yogita Singh; Pooja Sihag; Vijeta Sagwal; Priyanka Balyan; Anuj Kumar; Navjeet Ahalawat; Nita Lakra; Krishna Pal Singh; Vladan Pesic; Ivica Djalovic; Reyazul Rouf Mir; Om Parkash Dhankher

doi:10.3389/fgene.2022.933560

Structural and functional insights into the candidate genes associated with different developmental stages of flag leaf in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Front Genet. 2022 Aug 24:13:933560. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2022.933560. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Sheetal Mehla¹, Upendra Kumar¹, Prexha Kapoor¹, Yogita Singh¹, Pooja Sihag¹, Vijeta Sagwal¹, Priyanka Balyan², Anuj Kumar^{3

4}, Navjeet Ahalawat¹, Nita Lakra¹, Krishna Pal Singh^{5

6}, Vladan Pesic⁷, Ivica Djalovic⁸, Reyazul Rouf Mir⁹, Om Parkash Dhankher¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular Biology, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, College of Biotechnology, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India.
² Department of Botany, Deva Nagri P. G. College, CCS University, Meerut, India.
³ Shantou University Medical College, Shantou, China.
⁴ Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
⁵ Biophysics Unit, College of Basic Sciences and Humanities, GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, India.
⁶ Vice-Chancellor's Secretariat, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rohilkhand University, Bareilly, India.
⁷ Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
⁸ Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, Maxim Gorki 30, Novi Sad, Serbia.
⁹ Division of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir (SKUAST-Kashmir), Srinagar, India.
¹⁰ Stockbridge School of Agriculture, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, United States.

Abstract

Grain yield is one of the most important aims for combating the needs of the growing world population. The role of development and nutrient transfer in flag leaf for higher yields at the grain level is well known. It is a great challenge to properly exploit this knowledge because all the processes, starting from the emergence of the flag leaf to the grain filling stages of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), are very complex biochemical and physiological processes to address. This study was conducted with the primary goal of functionally and structurally annotating the candidate genes associated with different developmental stages of flag leaf in a comprehensive manner using a plethora of in silico tools. Flag leaf-associated genes were analyzed for their structural and functional impacts using a set of bioinformatics tools and algorithms. The results revealed the association of 17 candidate genes with different stages of flag leaf development in wheat crop. Of these 17 candidate genes, the expression analysis results revealed the upregulation of genes such as TaSRT1-5D, TaPNH1-7B, and TaNfl1-2B and the downregulation of genes such as TaNAP1-7B, TaNOL-4D, and TaOsl2-2B can be utilized for the generation of high-yielding wheat varieties. Through MD simulation and other in silico analyses, all these proteins were found to be stable. Based on the outcome of bioinformatics and molecular analysis, the identified candidate genes were found to play principal roles in the flag leaf development process and can be utilized for higher-yield wheat production.

Keywords: MD simulation; flag leaf development; gene expression analysis; homology modeling; qRT-PCR (quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction).