Bioinformatics and Expression Analysis of IDA-Like Genes Reveal Their Potential Functions in Flower Abscission and Stress Response in Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.)

Cun Guo,Qi Wang,Jinhao Sun,Yongfeng Guo,Xiaoxu Li,Zenglin Zhang,Zhiyuan Li

doi:10.3389/fgene.2021.670794

Abstract

The inflorescence deficient in abscission-like (IDL) genes have been shown to play critical roles in floral organ abscission, lateral root formation and various stress responses in Arabidopsis. The IDL gene family has been characterized in a number of plant species, while limited information is available about IDL genes of tobacco. In the current study, 15 NtIDL members were identified in the tobacco genome, and were classified into six groups together with IDL members from other species. Evolution analysis suggested that the NtIDL members form group VI might have originated from duplication events. Notably, NtIDL06 shared high similarities with AtIDA in the EPIP sequence, and its encoding gene was highly expressed in the abscission zone of flowers at late developmental stages, implying that NtIDL06 might regulate tobacco flower abscission. In addition, the results from cis-elements analysis of promoters and expression after stress treatments suggested that NtIDL members might be involved in various stress responses of tobacco. The results from this study provide information for further functional analysis related to flower abscission and stress responses of NtIDL genes.

Highlights

Abscission is a highly coordinated cell separation process in plants
To identify IDL proteins in the tobacco proteome, the Arabidopsis IDA and IDL1-8 proteins were employed as queries to search against the local tobacco proteome database using Blastp
To explore the conservation of tobacco IDLs during evolution, a number of representatives IDL sequences from previous studies (Tucker and Yang, 2012; Estornell et al, 2015; Ying et al, 2016; Kim et al, 2018; Liu et al, 2018) together with the newly identified NtIDL members were subjected to multiple sequence alignments using MAFFT, and a neighbor-joining tree was generated by MEGA X

Summary

Introduction

Abscission is a highly coordinated cell separation process in plants. Active abscission is advantageous in many aspects for plants, such as dispersal, propagation, pollination and defense (Lewis et al, 2006). Abscission can be triggered by multiple factors, including seasonal changes, pathogen attack, abiotic stresses, and hormones (Patharkar and Walker, 2019). Abscisic acid (ABA) and Methyl Jasmonate (MeJA) were reported to accelerate organ abscission, while auxin and brassinosteroids were negative regulators of shedding (Hartmond et al, 2000; Chandler, 2011; Marciniak et al, 2018; Wilmowicz et al, 2018; Mesejo et al, 2021)

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Discussion

Conclusion