Abstract
Abiotic stresses, such as drought and salinity, severely affects the growth, development and productivity of the plants. The Catharanthus roseus RLK1-like (CrRLK1L) protein kinase family is involved in several processes in the plant life cycle. However, there have been few studies addressing the functions of CrRLK1L proteins in soybean. In this study, 38 CrRLK1L genes were identified in the soybean genome (Glycine max Wm82.a2.v1). Phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that soybean CrRLK1L genes were grouped into clusters, cluster I, II, III. The chromosomal mapping demonstrated that 38 CrRLK1L genes were located in 14 of 20 soybean chromosomes. None were discovered on chromosomes 1, 4, 6, 7, 11, and 14. Gene structure analysis indicated that 73.6% soybean CrRLK1L genes were characterized by a lack of introns.15.7% soybean CrRLK1L genes only had one intron and 10.5% soybean CrRLK1L genes had more than one intron. Five genes were obtained from soybean drought- and salt-induced transcriptome databases and were found to be highly up-regulated. GmCrRLK1L20 was notably up-regulated under drought and salinity stresses, and was therefore studied further. Subcellular localization analysis revealed that the GmCrRLK1L20 protein was located in the cell membrane. The overexpression of the GmCrRLK1L20 gene in soybean hairy roots improved both drought tolerance and salt stresses and enhanced the expression of the stress-responsive genes GmMYB84, GmWRKY40, GmDREB-like, GmGST15, GmNAC29, and GmbZIP78. These results indicated that GmCrRLK1L20 could play a vital role in defending against drought and salinity stresses in soybean.
Highlights
Plants are sessile organisms that are subjected to both abiotic and biotic stressors during its life cycle
Whole-length proteins and conserved domains of 17 Arabidopsis Catharanthus roseus Receptor-Like Kinase 1 Like (CrRLK1L) genes were used as queries to search the soybean genome database
We identified 38 soybean CrRLK1L genes in the soybean genome, which were named GmCrRLK1L01GmCrRLK1L38 based on their chromosomal locations (Table 1)
Summary
Plants are sessile organisms that are subjected to both abiotic and biotic stressors during its life cycle. Some proteins can transmit stresses signals and regulate the expression of stresses-responsive genes, such as protein kinases, transcription factors, and protein phosphatases (Edwards et al, 2000; Shinozaki and YamaguchiShinozaki, 2007; Hundertmark and Hincha, 2008). Of these proteins, protein kinases are a vital regulator that attaches to different ligands, resulting in downstream gene expression (Chinnusamy et al, 2004). Most RLKs possess the N-terminal signal peptide (SP) in the ECLB, which is separate from epidermal growth factor-like repeats (EGFs). CRLK1, a calcium-regulated RLK, responds to cold tolerance in plants (Yang et al, 2010)
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