Abstract
Lectins are a diverse group of proteins that bind specific carbohydrates and are found throughout all kingdoms. In plants, lectins are involved in a range of important processes such as plant defense and stress signaling. Although the genome sequence of Glycine max (soybean) has been published, little is known about the abundance and expansion patterns of lectin genes in soybean. Using BLAST and hidden Markov models, a total of 359 putative lectin genes have been identified. Furthermore, these sequences could be classified in nine of the twelve plant lectin families identified today. Analysis of the domain organization demonstrated that most of the identified lectin genes encode chimerolectins, consisting of one or multiple lectin domains combined with other known protein domains. Both tandem and segmental duplication events have contributed to the expansion of the lectin gene family. These data provide a detailed understanding of the domain architecture and molecular evolution of the lectin gene family in soybean.
Highlights
The legume family is the third largest family within the Angiospermae and represents the second economically most important plant family after the Poaceae
We identified proteins belonging to nine different plant lectin families and examined the domain organization, expansion patterns and evolutionary relationship for these lectin genes in soybean
Our current results reveal that the whole lectin gene family in soybean has expanded through both tandem and segmental duplication
Summary
The legume family is the third largest family within the Angiospermae and represents the second economically most important plant family after the Poaceae. To their economic value, grain and forage legumes are of high nutritional value for human and animal food. Several legumes are considered as high energy crops and are used for biofuel production [1]. These features explain the extensive efforts of many researchers to better understand legume biology and physiology. In the last couple of years, research has mainly concentrated on Medicago truncatula (barrel clover), Lotus japonicus (Japanese trefoil) and Glycine max (soybean) The latter species was the first legume to be sequenced completely at genome level, serving as a reference for other legume species [2]
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