Abstract
BackgroundPlant nucleotide-binding site (NBS)-leucine-rich repeat (LRR) proteins encoded by resistance genes play an important role in the responses of plants to various pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, and nematodes. In this study, a comprehensive analysis of NBS-encoding genes within the whole cucumber genome was performed, and the phylogenetic relationships of NBS-encoding resistance gene homologues (RGHs) belonging to six species in five genera of Cucurbitaceae crops were compared.ResultsCucumber has relatively few NBS-encoding genes. Nevertheless, cucumber maintains genes belonging to both Toll/interleukine-1 receptor (TIR) and CC (coiled-coil) families. Eight commonly conserved motifs have been established in these two families which support the grouping into TIR and CC families. Moreover, three additional conserved motifs, namely, CNBS-1, CNBS-2 and TNBS-1, have been identified in sequences from CC and TIR families. Analyses of exon/intron configurations revealed that some intron loss or gain events occurred during the structural evolution between the two families. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that gene duplication, sequence divergence, and gene loss were proposed as the major modes of evolution of NBS-encoding genes in Cucurbitaceae species. Compared with NBS-encoding sequences from the Arabidopsis thaliana genome, the remaining seven TIR familes of NBS proteins and RGHs from Cucurbitaceae species have been shown to be phylogenetically distinct from the TIR family of NBS-encoding genes in Arabidopsis, except for two subfamilies (TIR4 and TIR9). On the other hand, in the CC-NBS family, they grouped closely with the CC family of NBS-encoding genes in Arabidopsis. Thus, the NBS-encoding genes in Cucurbitaceae crops are shown to be ancient, and NBS-encoding gene expansions (especially the TIR family) may have occurred before the divergence of Cucurbitaceae and Arabidopsis.ConclusionThe results of this paper will provide a genomic framework for the further isolation of candidate disease resistance NBS-encoding genes in cucumber, and contribute to the understanding of the evolutionary mode of NBS-encoding genes in Cucurbitaceae crops.
Highlights
Plant nucleotide-binding site (NBS)-leucine-rich repeat (LRR) proteins encoded by resistance genes play an important role in the responses of plants to various pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, and nematodes
The cucumber genome was sequenced by researchers who worked on the ‘Chinese Long’ inbred line 9930 and the gynoecious inbred line ‘Gy14’, which provided an opportunity to conduct a comprehensive overview of the NBS-encoding gene superfamily at the genome level [10]
Sequence and database search for NBS-encoding genes in Cucumis sativus The availability of the complete cucumber genome sequences facilitated the search for NBS-encoding genes
Summary
Plant nucleotide-binding site (NBS)-leucine-rich repeat (LRR) proteins encoded by resistance genes play an important role in the responses of plants to various pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, and nematodes. Susceptibility to multiple pathogens hinders their production increase and quality improvement [1,2,3,4,5] The NBS-LRR resistance (R) genes, which encode proteins containing nucleotide binding sites (NBS) and leucine-rich repeat (LRR) domains, form the largest R-gene family among plant genomes [6]. NBS and Pto analogues had been isolated and characterized using degenerate primers in cucumbers [7,8,9] This experimental approach failed to detect all the members of the gene families in the cucumbers. Genome-wide analysis of cucumber NBSencoding genes played an important role in R-gene mapping and cloning
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