Abstract
Polygalacturonase (PG), a large hydrolase family in plants, is involved in pectin disassembly of the cell wall in plants. The present study aims to characterize PG genes and investigate their expression patterns in Solanum lycopersicum. We identified 54 PG genes in the tomato genome and compared their amino acid sequences with their Arabidopsis counterpart. Subsequently, we renamed these PG genes according to their Arabidopsis homologs. Phylogenetic and evolutionary analysis revealed that these tomato PG genes could be classified into seven clades, and within each clade the exon/intron structures were conserved. Expression profiles analysis through quantitive real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) revealed that most SlPGs had specific or high expression patterns in at least one organ, and particularly five PG genes (SlPG14, SlPG15, SlPG49, SlPG70, and SlPG71) associated with fruit development. Promoter analysis showed that more than three cis-elements associated with plant hormone response, environmental stress response or specific organ/tissue development exhibited in each SlPG promoter regions. In conclusion, our results may provide new insights for the further study of PG gene function during plant development.
Highlights
Polygalacturonases (PGs) is an enzyme catalyzing the hydrolysis and disassembly of pectin, a major component of the cell wall in plants [1]
A total of 54 PG gene sequences were retrieved from the tomato genome for members of tomato PG gene family based on the TBLASTN search against the tomato genome database (Table 1 and Table S1)
54 PG gene family members of tomato were determined, which were renamed according to the homology of S. lycopersicum and A. thaliana
Summary
Polygalacturonases (PGs) is an enzyme catalyzing the hydrolysis and disassembly of pectin, a major component of the cell wall in plants [1]. The pectin network in cell walls needs to be disassembled along with the plant cells undergoing changes in shape. PGs are indispensable for almost all stages of plant development, such as organ shedding, fruit ripening, anther dehiscence, and pollen ripening [2,3,4]. Ogawa et al [4] have reported that the knockout of two PG genes of Arabidopsis (AtQRT2 and AtQRT3) resulted in the generation of tetrad pollen due to the failure of degradation of pectin in the pollen mother cell wall during the tetrad stage
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