Stress-associated proteins (SAPs) are a class of zinc finger proteins that confer tolerance to a variety of abiotic and biotic stresses in diverse plant species. However, in cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.), very little is known about the roles of SAP gene family members in regulating plant growth, development, and stress responses. In this study, a total of 12 SAP genes (named as CsSAP1-CsSAP12) were identified in the cucumber genome, which were unevenly distributed on six chromosomes. Gene duplication analysis detected one tandem duplication and two segmental duplication events. Phylogenetic analysis of SAP proteins from cucumber and other plants suggested that they could be divided into seven groups (sub-families), and proteins in the same group generally had the same arrangement of AN1 (ZnF-AN1) and A20 (ZnF-A20) domains. Most of the CsSAP genes were intronless and harbored a number of stress- and hormone-responsive cis-elements in their promoter regions. Tissue expression analysis showed that the CsSAP genes had a broad spectrum of expression in different tissues, and some of them displayed remarkable alteration in expression during fruit development. RT-qPCR results indicated that all the selected CsSAP genes displayed transcriptional responses to cold, drought, and salt stresses. These results enable the first comprehensive description of the SAP gene family in cucumber and lay a solid foundation for future research on the biological functions of CsSAP genes.
The aim of this study was to characterize the influence of Konjac glucomannan (KGM) on the functional and structural properties of wheat starch. Results showed that KGM significantly decreased the starch hydrolysis rate, with a lower level of rapidly digestible starch (RDS), and a higher content of slowly digestible starch (SDS). Besides, KGM decreased the content of leached amylose, while enhanced the swelling power, water‐holding capacity, freeze‐thaw stability, and paste clarity of wheat starch, which indicated a good improvement on the functional properties. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X‐ray diffraction patterns (XRD) manifested that the addition of KGM disrupted the original crystalline structures of wheat starch, which may result in the increased hydrolysis rate of starch. Interestingly, this did not consist with the decreased starch hydrolysis rate showed in the study. Moreover, FTIR results showed the existence of the interaction between KGM and starch. The morphological characterization demonstrated that the addition of KGM contributed to a more compact structure of freeze‐dried wheat starch. And KGM inhibited the expansion of starch granules and formed a barrier around the gelatinized starch. Therefore, the barrier around the starch granules and the interaction between KGM and starch were considered to be the important reasons that affected the starch digestibility.
Excessive intake of highly processed foods may led to a variety of metabolism-related diseases (Lv et al., 2016;Roberts & Leibel, 1998;Svendsen & Tonstad, 2004). Compared with the treatment of traditional drugs, dietary polysaccharides and polyphenols can alleviate the metabolism-related diseases with the advantages of little toxic and side effects (Darvesh et al., 2010;
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