Abstract
BackgroundCalcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs) have been shown to play important roles in various physiological processes, including plant growth and development, abiotic and biotic stress responses and plant hormone signaling in plants.ResultsIn this study, we performed a bioinformatics analysis of the entire maize genome and identified 40 CDPK genes. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that 40 ZmCPKs can be divided into four groups. Most maize CDPK genes exhibited different expression levels in different tissues and developmental stages. Twelve CDPK genes were selected to respond to various stimuli, including salt, drought and cold, as well as ABA and H2O2. Expression analyses suggested that maize CDPK genes are important components of maize development and multiple transduction pathways.ConclusionHere, we present a genome-wide analysis of the CDPK gene family in maize for the first time, and this genomic analysis of maize CDPK genes provides the first step towards a functional study of this gene family in maize.
Highlights
Calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs) have been shown to play important roles in various physiological processes, including plant growth and development, abiotic and biotic stress responses and plant hormone signaling in plants
The size of maize genome (~2300 Mb) was much larger than the genomes of Arabidopsis (125 Mb) and rice (389 Mb), the total number of maize CDPK genes was similar to the number of these genes in Arabidopsis and rice
Both ZmCPK4 and ZmCPK5 had an N-myristoylation motif and were predominately localized to the plasma membrane; ZmCK1 (ZmCPK3) was predicted to have an N-myristoylation motif, a ZmCK1::hGFP fusion protein was recently found to localize to the cytoplasm and nucleus [51]
Summary
Calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs) have been shown to play important roles in various physiological processes, including plant growth and development, abiotic and biotic stress responses and plant hormone signaling in plants. Plants consistently suffer from various environmental challenges, including drought, high salinity and low temperatures [1,2,3] In response to these stresses, plants have developed a series of survival mechanisms. The CDPK are one of the well-known Ca2+-sensor protein kinases involved in environmental stress resistance, Accumulating evidence indicates that CDPKs play important roles in response to a broad variety of abiotic and biotic stresses, such as drought, cold, salinity, wounding and pathogen infection, and in the signaling of plant hormones [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21].
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