Cereal prolamin evolution and homology revealed by sequence analysis

Prolamin mixtures were isolated from oats, rice, normal and high-lysine sorghum, two varieties of pearl millet, two strains of teosinte, and gamma grass and subjected to NH2-terminal amino acid sequence determinations. In each case (except for rice, whose prolamins apparently have blocked or unavailable NH2-terminal residues), primarily a single sequence was observed despite significant heterogeneity, suggesting that prolamin homology in each cereal arose through duplication and mutation of a single ancestral gene. Comparisons were then made to prolamin sequences previously determined for wheat, corn, barley, and rye. Within genera, different varieties or subspecies exhibited few differences, but more distantly related genera, subtribes, and tribes showed increasingly large differences. Within the subfamily Festucoideae, no homology was apparent between prolamins of oats and those of the subtribe Triticinae (including wheat, rye, and barley, for which prolamin homology was previously demonstrated). Within the subfamily Panicoideae, corn was shown to be closely related to teosinte but more distantly to Tripsacum. Sorghum was shown to have diverged less from corn than had millet. These comparisons demonstrate that prolamin sequence analyses can successfully predict and clarify evolutionary relationships of cereals.