Characterization of Vascular plant One-Zinc finger (VOZ) in soybean (Glycine maxand Glycine soja) and their expression analyses under drought condition.

Shoaib Ur Rehman,Muhammad Shees,Furqan Ahmad,Ahsan Irshad,Sajid Fiaz,Zhide Geng,Muhammad Hammad Nadeem Tahir,Muhammad Sajjad,Zulfiqar Ali,Ghulam Qanmber,Muhammad Usman,Umair Ashraf

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0253836

Abstract

Vascular plant one-zinc-finger (VOZ) transcription factors regulate plant growth and development under drought conditions. Six VOZ transcription factors encoding genes exist in soybean genome (both in Glycine max and Glycine soja). Herein, GmVOZs and GsVOZs were identified through in silico analysis and characterized with different bioinformatics tools and expression analysis. Phylogenetic analysis classified VOZ genes in four groups. Sequence logos analysis among G. max and G. soja amino acid residues revealed higher conservation. Presence of stress related cis-elements in the upstream regions of GmVOZs and GsVOZs highlights their role in tolerance against abiotic stresses. The collinearity analysis identified 14 paralogous/orthologous gene pairs within and between G. max and G. soja. The Ka/Ks values showed that soybean VOZ genes underwent selection pressure with limited functional deviation arising from whole genome and segmental duplication. The GmVOZs and GsVOZs were found to express in roots and leaves at seedling stage. The qRT-PCR revealed that GmVOZs and GsVOZs transcripts can be regulated by abiotic stresses such as polyethylene glycol (PEG). The findings of this study will provide a reference to decipher physiological and molecular functions of VOZ genes in soybean.

Highlights

MethodsArabidopsis Vascular plant one-zinc-finger (VOZ) protein sequences has been used as query sequences to identify VOZ transcription factors and proteins in different plant species such as G. max, G. soja, M. truncatula, G. raimondaii, S. melongena, P. trichocarpa, P. patens, A. comosus, O. sativa, Z. mays and B. rapa
Wild soybean (Glycine soja) is an ancestor of cultivated soybean (Glycine max L.)
We noticed that all the selected species have a minimum of two Vascular plant one-zinc-finger (VOZ) genes with Z. mays, G. max, G. soja and B. rapa have a greater number of members and M. truncatula, P. paten have only two and three members of VOZ genes, respectively, showing that this gene family was subjected to expansion in higher plants

Summary

Methods

Arabidopsis VOZs protein sequences has been used as query sequences to identify VOZ transcription factors and proteins in different plant species such as G. max, G. soja, M. truncatula, G. raimondaii, S. melongena, P. trichocarpa, P. patens, A. comosus, O. sativa, Z. mays and B. rapa. To confirm the retrieved VOZ protein sequences, Interproscan 63.0 (IPR039277) The identified VOZ members were confirmed by using Batch Web CD search tool CDD (Conserved Domains Database) search (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/bwrpsb/bwrpsb.cgi). Biophysical properties such as protein length, isoelectric point, molecular weight were computed using ExPASy ProtParam tool (http://us.expasy.org/tools/protparam.html). Protein sequences of VOZs from different plant species were aligned and phylogenetic tree was made in MEGA V 6 (https://www.megasoftware.net) by using maximum likelihood (ML) method [19]. Bootstrap method with thousand replicates was used to determine the reliabilities of the groups

Results

Discussion

Conclusion