Abstract
BackgroundWorldwide cultivation of maize is often impacted negatively by drought stress. Hyperosmolality-gated calcium-permeable channels (OSCA) have been characterized as osmosensors in Arabidopsis. However, the involvement of members of the maize OSCA (ZmOSCA) gene family in response to drought stress is unknown. It is furthermore unclear which ZmOSCA gene plays a major role in genetic improvement of drought tolerance in Maize.MethodsWe predicted the protein domain structure and transmembrane regions by using the NCBI Conserved Domain Database database and TMHMM server separately. The phylogeny tree was built by Mega7. We used the mixed linear model in TASSEL to perform the family-based association analysis.ResultsIn this report, 12 ZmOSCA genes were uncovered in the maize genome by a genome-wide survey and analyzed systematically to reveal their synteny and phylogenetic relationship with the genomes of rice, maize, and sorghum. These analyses indicated a relatively conserved evolutionary history of the ZmOSCA gene family. Protein domain and transmembrane analysis indicated that most of the 12 ZmOSCAs shared similar structures with their homologs. The result of differential expression analysis under drought at various stages, as well as the expression profiles in 15 tissues, revealed a functional divergence of ZmOSCA genes. Notably, the expression level of ZmOSCA4.1 being up-regulated in both seedlings and adult leaves. Notably, the association analysis between genetic variations in these genes and drought tolerance was detected. Significant associations between genetic variation in ZmOSCA4.1 and drought tolerance were found at the seedling stage. Our report provides a detailed analysis of the ZmOSCAs in the maize genome. These findings will contribute to future studies on the functional characterization of ZmOSCA proteins in response to water deficit stress, as well as understanding the mechanism of genetic variation in drought tolerance in maize.
Highlights
Drought stress is a key limiting environmental factor which can eventually cause food and societal problems, and numerous studies have been devoted to unraveling the mechanisms of drought resistance in plants
The results showed that between the maize, sorghum, and rice genomes, the OSCA gene family shared a similar evolutionary history, whilst the maize genome possessed a duplication event leading to a gain in one gene after the maize, sorghum, and rice genomes split
After most recent common ancestral (MRCA) analysis, we found that the Arabidopsis genome possessed the largest number of OSCAs, whilst the maize genome possessed three gene losses compared to Arabidopsis and one gene gain compared to the rice genome
Summary
Drought stress is a key limiting environmental factor which can eventually cause food and societal problems, and numerous studies have been devoted to unraveling the mechanisms of drought resistance in plants. The involvement of members of the maize OSCA (ZmOSCA) gene family in response to drought stress is unknown. Results: In this report, 12 ZmOSCA genes were uncovered in the maize genome by a genome-wide survey and analyzed systematically to reveal their synteny and phylogenetic relationship with the genomes of rice, maize, and sorghum These analyses indicated a relatively conserved evolutionary history of the ZmOSCA gene family. Our report provides a detailed analysis of the ZmOSCAs in the maize genome These findings will contribute to future studies on the functional characterization of ZmOSCA proteins in response to water deficit stress, as well as understanding the mechanism of genetic variation in drought tolerance in maize
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