Comparative genomic analysis of the WRKY III gene family in populus, grape, arabidopsis and rice

Biology Direct

Yiyi Wang¹  Lin Feng¹  Yuxin Zhu¹  Yuan Li¹  Hanwei Yan¹  Yan Xiang² 

[1] Laboratory of Modern Biotechnology, School of Forestry and Landscape Architecture, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei 230036, China

[2] Key Laboratory of Crop Biology of Anhui Agriculture University, Hefei 230036, China

关键词: Populus;    Expression;    Gene duplication;    Microsynteny;    WRKY III;   

Others  :  1230707
DOI  :  10.1186/s13062-015-0076-3

 received in 2015-03-28, accepted in 2015-08-17,  发布年份 2015

【 摘 要 】

Background

WRKY III genes have significant functions in regulating plant development and resistance. In plant, WRKY gene family has been studied in many species, however, there still lack a comprehensive analysis of WRKY III genes in the woody plant species poplar, three representative lineages of flowering plant species are incorporated in most analyses Arabidopsis (a model plant for annual herbaceous dicots), grape (one model plant for perennial dicots) and Oryza sativa (a model plant for monocots).

Results

In this study, we identified 10, 6, 13 and 28 WRKY III genes in the genomes of Populus trichocarpa, grape (Vitis vinifera), Arabidopsis thaliana and rice (Oryza sativa), respectively. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the WRKY III proteins could be divided into four clades. By microsynteny analysis, we found that the duplicated regions were more conserved between poplar and grape than Arabidopsis or rice. We dated their duplications by Ks analysis of Populus WRKY III genes and demonstrated that all the blocks were formed after the divergence of monocots and dicots. Strong purifying selection has played a key role in the maintenance of WRKY III genes in Populus. Tissue expression analysis of the WRKY III genes in Populus revealed that five were most highly expressed in the xylem. We also performed quantitative real-time reverse transcription PCR analysis of WRKY III genes in Populus treated with salicylic acid, abscisic acid and polyethylene glycol to explore their stress-related expression patterns.

Conclusions

This study highlighted the duplication and diversification of the WRKY III gene family in Populus and provided a comprehensive analysis of this gene family in the Populus genome. Our results indicated that the majority of WRKY III genes of Populus was expanded by large-scale gene duplication. The expression pattern of PtrWRKYIII gene identified that these genes play important roles in the xylem during poplar growth and development, and may play crucial role in defense to drought stress. Our results presented here may aid in the selection of appropriate candidate genes for further characterization of their biological functions in poplar.

Reviewers

This article was reviewed by Prof Dandekar and Dr Andrade-Navarro.

【 授权许可】

   
2015 Wang et al.

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