Gene Function Expression Profile of Faba bean (Vicia faba) Seeds

Faba bean (Vicia faba L) is one of the important grain crops worldwide and its genome, the largest among grain legumes (approx. 13.4 Gb), has yet to be sequenced. Comprehensive knowledge of genes expressed in the crop's large seeds would not only help drive new gene c improvements in the crop but also aid its future genome characteriza on. Here, we applied high throughput RNA- Seq (Quan ca on) technology to compare gene expression pro les of seeds recovered from six faba bean varie es with divergent agronomic and seed quality a ributes. We iden ed a total of 47,621 Unigenes across all genotypes and a mean count of 38,712 per genotype, total genes length 27605508bp. Comparison between expression levels in lines possessing contras ng phenotypes allowed us to iden fy candidate genes that may be associated with key traits. In all pairwise comparisons of genotypes, pairwise up-regulated plus down-regulated di erences varied between 8,661 and 12,337 genes and co-expressed genes uctuated between 30,239 and 35,884. Overall, there was a mean of 24.2% genes that were di eren ally expressed between pairs of genotypes. They were similar of GO pro les generated between the two phenotypic traits (Hydra on Capacity and Pea seed-borne mosaic virus (PSbMV) pools and comparison of the GO pro les generated by all pairs of individual genotypes. This is the rst comprehensive analysis of gene expression gene c pro le on faba bean seeds.