Genome-Wide Identification and Analysis of the WRKY Gene Family and Cold Stress Response in Acer truncatum.

Yan Li,Xiang Li,Lili Ge,Xiyang Zhao,Chunli Zhao,Kewei Cai,Zengjun Ren,Hongzhi Zhang,Jiatong Wei

doi:10.3390/genes12121867

Abstract

WRKY transcription factors constitute one of the largest gene families in plants and are involved in many biological processes, including growth and development, physiological metabolism, and the stress response. In earlier studies, the WRKY gene family of proteins has been extensively studied and analyzed in many plant species. However, information on WRKY transcription factors in Acer truncatum has not been reported. In this study, we conducted genome-wide identification and analysis of the WRKY gene family in A. truncatum, 54 WRKY genes were unevenly located on all 13 chromosomes of A. truncatum, the highest number was found in chromosomes 5. Phylogenetic relationships, gene structure, and conserved motif identification were constructed, and the results affirmed 54 AtruWRKY genes were divided into nine subgroup groups. Tissue species analysis of AtruWRKY genes revealed which were differently exhibited upregulation in flower, leaf, root, seed and stem, and the upregulation number were 23, 14, 34, 18, and 8, respectively. In addition, the WRKY genes expression in leaf under cold stress showed that more genes were significantly expressed under 0, 6 and 12 h cold stress. The results of this study provide a new insight the regulatory function of WRKY genes under abiotic and biotic stresses.

Highlights

Transcription factors are the most abundant gene regulators in multicellular genomes.They activate or inhibit the expression of target genes by binding to specific DNA sequences, regulating the gene expression of all organisms [1,2,3]
On the basis of their phylogenetic clades and different assembling, the three groups can be further divided into subgroups, such as group II have five subgroups (II a–e) [11,12]
54 AtruWRKY genes were successfully identified from the A. truncatum genome by multiple sequence alignment after removing duplicates, incomplete sequences, and sequences without corresponding domains, and they were named AtruWRKY1 to AtruWRKY54 according to their Gene ID and structure

Summary

Introduction

Transcription factors are the most abundant gene regulators in multicellular genomes They activate or inhibit the expression of target genes by binding to specific DNA sequences, regulating the gene expression of all organisms [1,2,3]. Approximately 60 amino acid residues of the N-terminus contain the conserved sequence associated with DNA binding activity (WRKYGQK), and the C-end have a zinc-finger motif (Cx4–5 Cx22–23 HxH or Cx7 Cx23 HxC) to participate in zinc finger protein interactions [6,7,8]. WRKY proteins are divided into three groups based on the number of conserved domain and type of zinc finger, named group I, group II and group III [9,10]. WRKY has many special biological functions due to its unique domain

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Discussion

Conclusion