Sel’skokhozyaistvennaya Biologiya [Agricultural Biology], 2018, Vol. 53, ¹ 3, p. 450-463.
(how to cite this article)

doi: 10.15389/agrobiology.2018.3.450eng

UDC 635.21:631.522/.524:577.21

Acknowledgments: 
Supported financially by the Complex Research Program for potato breeding and seed production

 

THE USE OF CARBOHYDRATE METABOLISM GENES FOR POTATO (Solanum tuberosum L.) IMPROVEMENT (review)

M.A. Slugina, E.Z. Kochieva

Research Center of Biotechnology RAS, Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations, 33/2, Leninskii prospect, Moscow, 119071 Russia, e-mail mashinmail@mail.ru (✉ corresponding author), ekochieva@yandex.ru

ORCID:
Slugina M.A. orcid.org/0000-0003-1281-3837
Kochieva E.Z. orcid.org/0000-0002-6091-0765

Received February 2, 2018

 

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the most important crop species in the world. Its nutritional and industrial qualities depend on starch content in tubers. Starch consists of linear (amylose) and branched (amylopectin) glucose polymers. Three main goals of modern potato breeding programs include increment of tuber starch yield, development of potato cultivars with improved amylose or amylopectin content and prevention of cold-induced sweetening. Nowadays some molecular and biotechnological approaches to vary plant characteristics have been developed. Among them the most popular are marker-assisted selection, transgenic technologies, genome editing. But, regardless of the chosen approach, the fundamental stage of successful work is the proper choice of the target gene, which in turn requires detailed understanding of the metabolic pathways for the synthesis and degradation of carbohydrates in plant tissues. Starch metabolism includes rather big number of reactions and requires synergetic work of a great number of enzymes. Moreover, it should be mentioned that in starch formation and degradation participate not only carbohydrates modifying proteins, but some regulatory proteins that are also involved in such pathways. Taking into account the previously published review (V.K. Khlestkin et al., 2017), in which attention is paid to genes that determine the specific physical, chemical and technological starch properties, in the present review the emphasis is made on the current understanding of the starch biosynthesis and degradation processes and the key genes of carbohydrate metabolism enzymes in potato tubers. In the present review, among proteins involved in plant carbohydrate metabolism we have chosen those that play the key roles in potato tubers starch formation and retention. The key proteins are sucrose synthases, starch-phosphorilases, granule-bound starch synthase, α- and β-amylases, acid vacuolar invertase, as well as invertase and amylase inhibitors. The main candidate genes that may influence potato agronomical traits are described. The future work requires analysis of allelic polymorphism of the candidate genes in a wide range of potato species, cultivars and lines, looking for associations with desired agronomic traits. It will allow us to use these genes for marker-assisted selection and as target genes for gene editing.

Keywords: potato, starch, amylose, amylopectin, cold-induced sweetening, starch metabolism.

 

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