Gibberellin (GA) is an essential phytohormone that controls many aspects of plant development. To enhance our understanding of GA metabolism in maize, we intensively screened and identified 27 candidate genes encoding the seven GA metabolic enzymes including ent-copalyl diphosphate synthase (CPS), ent-kaurene synthase (KS), ent-kaurene oxidase (KO), ent-kaurenoic acid oxidase (KAO), GA 20-oxidase (GA20ox), GA 3-oxidase (GA3ox), and GA 2-oxidase (GA2ox), using all available public maize databases. The results indicate that maize genome contains three CPS, four KS, two KO and one KAO genes, and most of them are arranged separately on the maize genome, which differs from that in rice. In addition, the enzymes catalyzing the later steps (ZmGA20ox, ZmGA3ox and ZmGA2ox) are also encoded by gene families in maize, but GA3ox enzyme is likely to be encoded by single gene. Expression profiling analysis exhibited that transcripts of 15 GA metabolic genes could be detected during maize seed germination, which provides further evidence for the notion that increased synthesis of active GA in the embryo is required for triggering germination events. Moreover, a variety of temporal genes expression patterns of GA metabolic genes were detected, which revealed the complexity of underlying mechanism for GA regulated seed germination.
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