Abstract
Calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs) play critical roles in regulating growth, development and stress response in plants. Information about CDPKs in tomato, however, remains obscure although it is one of the most important model crops in the world. In this study, we performed a bioinformatics analysis of the entire tomato genome and identified 29 CDPK genes. These CDPK genes are found to be located in 12 chromosomes, and could be divided into four groups. Analysis of the gene structure and splicing site reflected high structure conservation within different CDPK gene groups both in the exon-intron pattern and mRNA splicing. Transcripts of most CDPK genes varied with plant organs and developmental stages and their transcripts could be differentially induced by abscisic acid (ABA), brassinosteroids (BRs), methyl jasmonate (MeJA), and salicylic acid (SA), as well as after exposure to heat, cold, and drought, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first report about the genome-wide analysis of the CDPK gene family in tomato, and the findings obtained offer a clue to the elaborated regulatory role of CDPKs in plant growth, development and stress response in tomato.
Highlights
Plants have evolved different strategies to acclimatize themselves to various challenging environments, including biotic and abiotic stresses
We found that 13, 11, and 11 SlCDPK genes were induced at the transcriptional level after exposure to heat, cold, and drought stresses, respectively
Each of tomato 12 chromosomes was located with more than one SlCDPK variants, which manifested the conservative of SlCDPK family in long evolution
Summary
Plants have evolved different strategies to acclimatize themselves to various challenging environments, including biotic and abiotic stresses. Calcium sensors or calcium-binding proteins can recognize transient calcium concentration variations, and in turn alter transcript of downstream genes, proteins phosphorylation or enzyme activity (Sanders et al, 1999; Harmon et al, 2000). Three classes of calcium sensors have been characterized in plants: calmodulin (CaM) and CaM-like protein (CaML), calcineurin B-like protein (CBL), and calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs). Among these calcium sensors, only CDPKs, depending on their special structure, can directly sense, respond, and translate Ca2+ signals into downstream protein phosphorylation without protein partner conformational change (Cheng et al, 2002; Ludwig et al, 2004; Harper and Harmon, 2005; Poovaiah et al, 2013).
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