Transcriptome analysis reveals key differentially expressed genes involved in wheat grain development.

Wheat seed development is a very important stage in the cereal crops seed life cycle. The accumulation reserves of wheat mature seeds provide not only the food for human and livestock feed, but also the energy for the seed germination.However, due to the large genome size, many studies related to wheat seed are very complex and uncompleted. Transcriptome analysis of elite Chinses bread wheat cultivar Jimai 20 may provides a comprehensive understanding of wheat seed development. Seed development involves in the regulation of large number of genes, whether these genes are normal activated or not is very important to seed development. We performed microarray analysis using the Affymetrix Gene Chip to reveal the gene expression profiles in the phases of wheat cultivar Jimai 20 grain filling. Our results provide a new insights into the thoroughly metabolic changes of seed development as well as the key differentially expressed genes involved in wheat grain development. The three groups including development seeds were harvest at three successive phases, which were 11 (P1), 15 (P2), 20 (P3) days post-anthesis (DPA) respectively. Three independent experiments were performed for each group.