萜类化合物具有重要的生理、生态作用和药用价值, 萜类合成酶(TPS)是合成萜类化合物的关键酶。通过整合中粒咖啡(Coffee canephora)的基因组和转录组数据, 利用生物信息学方法, 鉴定出43个萜类合成酶全长基因, 并对这些基因的分子进化、结构、复制、表达及功能分化的机理进行了探究。结果表明, 中粒咖啡萜类合成酶基因可以分为5个亚家族(a、b、c、e/f、g), 不同亚家族的基因结构差异很大; 串联复制是基因家族扩增的主要原因; 表达分析结果表明, 萜类合成酶基因在不同组织中的表达差异明显; 中粒咖啡萜类合成酶基因启动子区的顺式调控元件可能与基因的功能分化相关; 不同亚家族之间的功能差异主要由亚家族特异的氨基酸决定。

Terpenoids are catalyzed by terpenoid synthase and have important physiological, ecological and medicinal value. By integrating data for the Coffee canephora genome and transcriptome, terpenoid synthase genes from C. canephora were identified. Then, the molecular evolution, structure, duplication and expression pattern of the genes were analyzed. Finally, functional differentiation among the terpenoid synthase subfamilies was investigated. C. canephora contains 43 full-length terpenoid synthase genes, which can be divided into 5 subfamilies (a, b, c, e/f, g), with largely different gene structure. Amplification of the genes is mainly caused by tandem duplication. Also the expression pattern of C. canephora terpenoid synthases differs in different tissues. Functional differentiation between each terpenoid synthase subfamily may have several reasons; cis-regulatory elements in the gene promoter region may be strongly related to functional differentiation and the differentiation is mainly caused by the subfamily-specific amino acid.