Queensland Agricultural Biotechnology Centre, Gehrmann Laboratories, University of Queensland, 4072, Qld, Australia.
Theor Appl Genet. 1994 Oct;89(4):509-13. doi: 10.1007/BF00225388.
α-Amylases are the key enzymes involved in the hydrolysis of starch in plants. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect polymorphisms in the length of amplified sequences between the annealing sites of two primers derived from published α-amy1 gene sequences in barley. These two primers (Bsw1 and Bsw7), flanking the promoter region and the first exon, amplified two PCR fragments in barley. One of the amplified products, with the expected length of 820 bp, appeared together with another shorter PCR band of around 750 bp. This 750-bp fragment seems to be derived from an α-amylase gene not reported previously. Both of the PCR products could be amplified from the two-rowed barley varieties tested, including cv Himalaya from which the sequence information was obtained. Five of the six-rowed barley varieties also have the two PCR fragments whereas another two have only the long fragment. These two fragments seem to be unique to barley, neither of them could be amplified from other cereals; for example, wheat, rye or sorghum. These two α-amylase fragments were mapped to the long arm of 6H, the location of the α-amy1 genes, using wheat-barley addition lines. Amplification of genomic DNA from wild barley accessions with primers Bsw1 and Bsw7 indicated that both of the fragments could be present, or the long and short fragments could be present alone. The results also demonstrated that the genes specifying these two fragments could be independent from each other in barley. The conserved banding pattern of these two fragments in the two-rowed barley varieties implies that artificial selection from these genes may have played an important role in the evolution of cultivated barley from wild barley.
α-淀粉酶是参与植物淀粉水解的关键酶。聚合酶链反应（PCR）用于检测来自大麦已发表α-淀粉酶基因序列的两个引物退火位点之间扩增序列长度的多态性。这两个引物（Bsw1 和 Bsw7），侧翼的启动子区域和第一外显子，在大麦中扩增了两个 PCR 片段。一个扩增产物的预期长度为 820bp，与另一个约 750bp 的较短 PCR 带一起出现。这个 750bp 片段似乎来自以前未报道过的α-淀粉酶基因。这两个 PCR 产物都可以从测试的二棱大麦品种中扩增，包括从其获得序列信息的 Himalaya 品种。六个六棱大麦品种中的五个也有两个 PCR 片段，而另外两个只有长片段。这两个片段似乎是大麦所特有的，它们都不能从其他谷物中扩增出来；例如，小麦、黑麦或高粱。这两个α-淀粉酶片段被映射到 6H 的长臂上，即α-amy1 基因的位置，使用小麦-大麦添加系。用引物 Bsw1 和 Bsw7 扩增野生大麦种质的基因组 DNA 表明，两个片段都可以存在，或者长片段和短片段可以单独存在。结果还表明，大麦中指定这两个片段的基因彼此之间可能是独立的。这两个片段在二棱大麦品种中的保守带型暗示，这些基因的人工选择可能在野生大麦向栽培大麦的进化中发挥了重要作用。
