Molecular Characterization and SNP Markers of the β-purothionin Gene in Einkorn Wheats

Forty-three gene sequences encoding purothionin were characterized from the three species or subspecies of einkorn wheats. These sequences contained 887 bp, among which 92 SNPs including 29 indel loci were detected, giving an average SNP frequency of one SNP per 9.64 bases. According to these sequences, 5 SNP markers were successfully designed, which were used to mine the variations of purothionin genes of 102 einkorn wheat accessions. Based on the 5 detected SNP loci, 102 einkorn wheat accessions could be divided into 21 haplotypes, among which 11 haplotypes contained a single sample. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the purothionin genes from einkorn wheats were more closely related to those from D genome than B genome. Seven out of the 43 gene sequences were assumed to be pseudogenes by the definition of containing in-frame stop codons and small insertions/deletions leading to frameshift. In the remaining 36 amino acid sequences, the 8 Cys and Tyr-13 loci in the mature thionin domain which played important roles in the biological activities were all conserved, whereas there were some varieties occurred in some other important amino acid residues such as Lys and Arg.