Seeds, the most important and basic material in agricultural production, are the staple food resource of world population. It’s essential to explore the regulation mechanisms of seed germination.

Soybean contains mainly storage oils and proteins, which makes it an ideal material to study the mobilization of reserves other than starches during germination. PhD student Chao Han at the supervision of Professor Pingfang Yang from Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Speciality Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden carried out a comprehensive proteome profiling analysis on germinating soybean seeds through one-dimensional gel electrophoresis followed by liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry strategy. Comprehensive comparison was also made between rice and soybean germinating seed.

Study revealed that proteins and oils are the two major reserves in soybean seeds, while starches are the predominant one for rice. Deep analyses of the proteins and pathways showed that lipids were degraded through lipoxygenase dependent pathway and proteins were degraded through both protease and 26S proteosome system, and the lipoxygenase could also help to remove the reactive oxygen species during the rapid mobilization of reserves of soybean germinating seeds. The differences between rice and soybean germinating seeds proteome profiles indicate that each crop species has distinct mechanism for reserves mobilization during germination. Different reserves could be converted into starches before they are totally utilized during the germination in different crops seeds.
 

Relevant results were published in PLOS ONE entitled “Analysis of Proteome Profile in Germinating Soybean Seed, and Its Comparison with Rice Showing the Styles of Reserves Mobilization in Different Crops”.

Article link: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0056947 

Functional categorization of the identified proteins 

Accumulation of ROS in germinating crop seeds