天冬氨酸蛋白酶（aspartic protease）作为四大类蛋白水解酶之一，在防御反应、有性生殖过程、衰老和细胞程序性死亡以及蛋白质的储存和降解中发挥重要作用。为深入了解玉米天冬氨酸蛋白酶家族基因（ZmAPs）的生物学功能，本研究以玉米B73基因组为参考序列，在全基因组水平系统分析了玉米天冬氨酸蛋白酶家族成员的基因组结构信息。本研究总共鉴定出75个ZmAPs，通过系统进化树分析将ZmAPs分为两大亚组，同一亚组之间的motif分布与基因结构都是相对保守的。染色体定位和共线性分析发现ZmAPs不均匀的分布在玉米的10条染色体上，其中7对为串联重复基因。对其启动子顺式作用元件分析后发现，ZmAPs可能参与光响应、MeJA及ABA等信号通路。此外，对生物与非生物胁迫下的玉米转录组表达谱分析发现，ZmAPs对生物胁迫的响应更为强烈，表明不少ZmAPs可能参与玉米抗病的过程。本研究为进一步探究ZmAPs功能并挖掘玉米抗性基因奠定了基础。

As one of the four classes of proteolytic enzymes, aspartic protease plays an important role in defense response, sexual reproduction, senescence and programmed cell death as well as protein storage and degradation. In order to explore the biological functions of ZmAPs, The B73 maize genome was used as reference genome to identify the maize Aspartic protease family members by genome-wide gene structure analysis. In this study, a total of 75 ZmAPs were identified, and ZmAPs were divided into two major subgroups by phylogenetic tree analyses. Motif distribution and gene structure in the same subgroup was relatively conservative. Chromosomal mapping analysis showed that ZmAPs were unevenly distributed in 10 different maize chromosomes and 7 pairs of tandem repeats were found. After analyzing the cis-elements of the gene promoters, we found that ZmAPs may be involved in light response, MeJA and ABA signaling pathway etc. In addition, through transcriptome profiling of maize under biotic and abiotic stress, we found that ZmAPs were more responsive to biological stress, suggesting that ZmAPs may be involved in disease resistance in maize. This study established the basis for further dissection of ZmAPs functions and identification of the stress responsive genes in maize.

NSFC-河南联合基金(U2004207)、河南省“中原千人计划”中原青年拔尖人才项目(ZYQR201912168)、河南省重点研发与推广专项-科技攻关项目 (192102110018)