Genome-Wide Identification and Characterization of the SBT Gene Family in maize and Its Expression in the Various tissues

Maize is one of the three major food or feed crops in China. Bacillus subtilis protease like serine protease (SBT) is a serine proteolytic enzyme, which widely exists in various organisms and participates in biological growth and defense. However, SBT genes functions remained uncharacterized in growth and stress response in maize. Therefore, here we characterized the SBT gene family of maize. In this study, we identified 59 maize SBT genes (ZmSBTs), which were divided into 6 subfamilies through phylogenetic analysis. ZmSBTs are distributed unevenly on 10 chromosomes in Maize. As expected, ZmSBTs contained cis-acting elements for plant growth and defense. In addition, the transcriptome data of different maize tissues shows the dynamic differential expression of ZmSBTs in different tissues. We also predicted the interaction of ZmSBT1.7 and ZmSBT2.5 specifically expressed in meiosis_tassels with other maize proteins. We revealed that the ZmSBT1.2 is specifically expressed in seeds with other maize proteins. This study provided valuable information about maize SBT gene family and clarified the possible biological functions of ZmSBT1.7, ZmSBT2.5, and ZmSBT1.2. The identified candidate genes could be used to breed higher-yielding Maize cultivars to feed the world population.