A Genomic Based Wheat Protein Atlas

Protein is the ultimate product of gene expression, which is responsible for traits including quality of the plant. Many of them are important in agriculture, for example proteins related to drought resistance. In most cases related crop species are utilized to identify significant proteins based on protein sequence. This study identified the wheat protein changes during spike development when water stress was applied, against the genome sequence data (IWGSC) to facilitate more accurate characterization of QTLs to assist the breeding programs. A total of 3,769 proteins have been identified through iTRAQ analysis from wheat genome sequence database with a confidence level of 95% and higher. Quantitative analysis showed differential expression of a number of proteins in response to water stress, plant growth stages and genotypes. Use of wheat genome sequence data enabled us to assign proteins to QTL of significance in agriculture. The protein data matrix from this study was imported into the software “Tritigate” that provides the opportunity of linking the proteomic data with transcriptomic and genomic data. Our analysis combined with other studies provide more than 6,000 proteins that have been recognised through IWGSC database as the first step of an approach to construct a genome based wheat protein atlas. We discuss this protein atlas in the context of challenging task of linking up the proteins to agronomic traits defined by genomic data