A molecular genetic toolkit for the differential expression analysis of soybean β-conglycinin subunit genes

Abstract

The majority of proteins in soybean seeds are storage ones, including β-conglycinin and glycinin, which are necessary for seed germination. At the same time, they are the most valuable soy proteins used in the food industry, since their subunit composition and proportion of total protein can affect the quality of the resulting food product. β-conglycinins are trimers with different composition of subunits which are designated as α', α, β and encoded by the CG-1, CG-3, and CG-4 genes, respectively. The PCR analysis employed a model soybean cultivar ‘Sentyabrinka’. A complementary DNA synthesized from the RNA isolated from seeds of the studied cultivar served as a template. The in silico created pairs of primers for CG-1, CG-3, and CG-4 gene transcripts were used. As the result of PCR and the analysis of the obtained electrophoregrams, optimal annealing temperatures of primers for the CG-1, CG-3 and CG-4 genes were selected, at which only the characteristic fragment was observed. Thus, a molecular genetic toolkit has been developed for a comprehensive study of the qualitative and quantitative composition of soybean protein and can be used for further analysis of differential expression of genes responsible for the synthesis of β-conglycinin subunits.

Keywords

• soybean proteins, <i>cg-1</i>, <i>cg-3</i>, <i>cg-4</i>, quantitative real-time pcr