ABSTRACT
Wheat is a major food crop and an important component of human diet throughout the world. There are two major types of cultivated wheat; one is tetraploid durum (pasta) wheat and another one is hexaploid bread wheat. Wheat grain is the reservoir of two major dietary components - carbohydrate and protein, which get accumulated during seed maturation and directly affects yield and quality. Hexaploid, having 6 copies of each chromosome differs to a great extent from tetraploid having 4 copies of each chromosome. Studying the gene expression pattern in developing grain would help in understanding the difference in metabolic process as well as involvement of the genes in these two types of wheat. A transcriptional comparison of developing grains was carried out between the two wheat genotypes; tetraploid (AABB:PDW233) and hexaploid (AABBDD:PBW343) using RNA-seq. Approximately 194 million raw reads were obtained from both libraries. After removal of contaminations, a huge proportion (>99%), of high quality reads were obtained, were aligned to reference genome. A total of 2324 up-regulated and 522 down-regulated genes were identified as differentially expressed between PDW233 vs PBW343. Gene ontology annotation and enrichment analysis gave further information about differentially expressed genes between durum and bread wheat. This information will help in understanding process grain reserve in tetraploid and hexaploid wheat in relation to their nutritional quality.