The invention relates to gene expression regulatory sequences from soybean, specifically to the promoter of a soybean eukaryotic glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenasegene and fragments thereof and their use in promoting the expression of one or more heterologous nucleic acid fragments in a constitutive manner in plants. The invention further discloses compositions, polynucleotide constructs, transformed host cells, transgenic plants and seeds containing the recombinant construct with the promoter, and methods for preparing and using the same.