English

Abstract

Plants cope with thermo-stress by increased expression of heat shock genes. These genes encode various heat shock proteins (HSPs) which rapidly accumulate and protect plants following hasty heat stress. Heat shock transcription factors (HSFs) primarily regulate expression of HSP genes by deciphering conserved binding motifs in promoter region. We retrieved HSF genes of Arabidopsis and chickpea from the online data bases and analyzed their structure and properties using bioinformatics tools. Here, we reported 20 non-redundant genes encoding HSF domain containing proteins in chickpea. Comparative phylogenetic analysis of HSF genes with Arabidopsis revealed four major groups with several paralogous and orthologous genes. Gene localization studies showed that HSF genes are unevenly distributed across all of the eight chromosomes. Segmental duplications were principally involved in HSF gene family expansion during evolution. HSF genes predominantly contain a single intron. However, quite a few genes also retain two introns, which suggest gain of intron during the evolutionary process. Combined conserved-domain analysis of Arabidopsis and chickpea HSF proteins revealed presence of 19 most common domains. Comparison of conserved domains with phylogenetic tree has shown that some domains were present in a clade-specific manner. The presence of multiple conserved domains in HSF proteins suggested that the respective genes originate from duplication events. Our in-silico work may prove helpful in understanding the evolutionary pathways of HSFs in chickpea.