Abstract
During plant growth, development and stress adaption, receptor-like protein kinases (RLKs) are essential components in perceiving and integrating extracellular stimuli and transmitting the signals to activate the downstream signaling pathways. Cysteine-rich receptor-like protein kinases (CRKs) are a large subfamily of RLKs and their roles in modulating plant disease resistance are well elucidated. However, the roles of CRKs in plant abiotic stress responses, especially heat stress, are largely unknown. In this study, 35 SlCRK genes were identified in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) based on the multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic relationships. SlCRK genes are tandemly distributed on seven chromosomes and have similar exon–intron organization and common conserved motifs. Various phytohormone responsive, stress responsive cis-regulatory elements and heat shock elements are predicted in the promoter regions of SlCRK genes. Transcriptome analysis of tomato fruits under heat stress revealed that most SlCRK genes were downregulated upon heat treatment. GO enrichment analyses of genes that were co-expressed with SlCRK members have identified various stress responses related and proteasomal protein catabolic process related genes, which may be involved in heat stress signaling. Overall, our results provide valuable information for further research on the roles of SlCRKs in response to abiotic stress, especially heat stress.
Highlights
Receptor-like protein kinases (RLKs) percept a variety of external and internal stimuli and transmit the input signal to induce the activated expression of appropriate target genes [1]
Over-expression of CRK5 or CRK13 enhances plant resistance to Pseudomonas syringae [6,7] The signaling pathways mediated by several Cysteine-rich receptor-like protein kinases (CRKs), such as BR-insensitive 1 (BRI1) [8] and FLAGELLIN-SENSITIVE2(FLS2) [9], have been well characterized in hormone perception and pathogen response
“cysteine-rich receptor-like protein kinase” as key words to search for target genes, and these target genes and homologous CRK genes in Arabidopsis were used as queries for BLASTP to search for other putative SlCRK genes
Summary
Receptor-like protein kinases (RLKs) percept a variety of external and internal stimuli and transmit the input signal to induce the activated expression of appropriate target genes [1]. RLKs generally contain an amino-terminal signal sequence, an extracellular domain, a single transmembrane domain and a cytoplasmic domain with serine/threonine protein kinase activity [2]. Many CRKs have been proven to play vital roles in biotic stress response. Over-expression of CRK5 or CRK13 enhances plant resistance to Pseudomonas syringae [6,7] The signaling pathways mediated by several CRKs, such as BR-insensitive 1 (BRI1) [8] and FLAGELLIN-SENSITIVE2(FLS2) [9], have been well characterized in hormone perception and pathogen response. In cucumber (Cucumis sativus), a dominantly inherited powdery mildew resistance QTL, Pm1.1, contains two tandemly arrayed cysteine-rich receptor-like protein kinase genes [17]
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