High-throughput proteome analysis reveals changes of primary metabolism and energy production under artificial aging treatment in Glycine max seeds

Abstract

This study was conducted to obtain basic information on protein profile changes by artificial aging in soybean seeds. Seed proteins were extracted using the protamine sulfate precipitation method, which improves the detection of low-abundance proteins (LAPs) by depleting the major seed storage proteins . Isolated proteins were separated by high-resolution two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE), and differentially modulated protein spots were identified by MALDI-TOF/TOF. A total of 33 differential proteins were identified of which 31 and 2 showed decreased and increased abundances, respectively. Functional annotation of the identified proteins revealed that proteins were mainly associated with primary metabolism (55%) and response to stimulus (20.9%). Proteins with increased abundance were associated with nutrient reservoir activity (spots 5, 10), while the decreased abundance proteins were mainly involved in the primary metabolism such as carbohydrate metabolic process (spots 1–3, 11), protein folding (spots 6–9, 33), glucose metabolic process (spot 25) oxidoreductase activity (spots 19–24), UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase activity (spots 12, 13). These results provide information about proteome changes, especially, LAPs during artificial seed aging treatment.