Vol. 11, Special Issue 1 (2022)

Author(s):
Anuj Kumar, G Singh, BK Prasad, PK Sharma and Rajendera Kumar

Abstract:
Bread wheat is one of the most important world food crops. Globally, wheat production was 772.64 million metric tons in 2022-21. The availability of the complete genome sequence is allowed the identification and analysis of gene family at the genome level in wheat. The natural resistance-associated macrophage protein (NRAMP) complement is a highly conserved essential membrane protein family involved in iron transport. Iron is an essential nutrient for virtually all organisms. The NRAMP proteins are widely involved in the wheat metabolic network and that they help in divalent metal ion transporter pathways in roots and shoots. This study systematically identified and characterized the wheat NRAMP gene family using three approaches, i.e. HMM (Hidden-Markov Model), Pfam (http://pfam.sanger.ac.uk) and BLASTP were used at the whole genome level. A total of 29 wheat pTaNRAMP genes, were identified, and they were unevenly distributed on wheat chromosomes. The conserved motif, subcellular localization and phylogenetic relationship analysis further supported the classification of pTaNRAMP gene in wheat. A total of 29 putative NRAMP encoding genes were divided into four clades based on phylogenetic tree analysis with Arabidopsis and rice genomes. The study of conserved motif analysis represents that the same clade genes have conserved motifs. Additionally, the chromosomal distribution pattern revealed that most of the NRAMP genes were distributed across cell membrane and other in chloroplast, mitochondria and nucleus. Further, detailed analysis was conducted to examine the functional role of these genes in iron transport this will enable us to exploit these genes as molecular tools for biofortification in wheat.