Ajit Ghosh
Detoxification of a highly cytotoxic metabolite methylglyoxal (MG) is carried out through the sequential action of two glyoxalase enzymes, glyoxalase I (GLYI) and glyoxalase II (GLYII). Physiological and metabolic role of glyoxalase proteins have been comprehensively investigated in various plant and animal species. Previously genome-wide analysis of soybean indicates the presence of fortyone GLYI and twenty-three GLYII proteins encoded by twenty-four and twelve genes, respectively. Expression of GmGLYI and GmGLYII genes was found to be modulated by different developmental stimuli and abiotic stresses. In the present study, expression of soybean glyoxalase genes has been analyzed at five distinct developmental stages and eight tissues as well as in response to various biotic stresses using publicly available microarray data. GmGLYI-7, GmGLYI-10/21, GmGLYII-1/8, and GmGLYII-6 showed high level of expression at all the developmental stages and tissues with few exceptions; while GmGLYI-6/9, GmGLYI-20, GmGLYII-6 and GmGLYII-10 showed most biotic stress specific modulation. However, the observed alteration is highly complex that depends on the duration and type of infected organisms.