Abstract
Jacalin-related lectins (JRLs) are a new subfamily of plant lectins that has recently been recognized and plays an important role in plant growth, development, and abiotic stress response. Although moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) is an economically and industrially important bamboo worldwide, there has been no systematic identification of JRLs in this species. Here, we identified 25 JRL genes in moso bamboo, and these genes are unequally distributed among 10 genome scaffolds. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the moso bamboo JRLs were clustered into four JRL subgroups: I, II, V, and VII. Numerous stress-responsive and hormone-regulated cis-elements were detected in the upstream promoter regions of the JRLs. Genome collinearity analyses showed that the JRL genes of moso bamboo are more closely related to those of Brachypodium distachyon than to those of Oryza sativa and Zea mays. Sixty-four percent of the PeJRL genes are present as segmental and tandem duplicates. qRT-PCR expression analysis showed that JRL genes in the same subgroup were significantly downregulated in response to salicylic acid (SA), abscisic acid (ABA), and methyl jasmonate (MeJA) treatments and significantly upregulated under low temperature, drought, and salt stress; they also exhibited tissue-specific expression patterns. Subcellular localization experiments revealed that PeJRL04 and PeJRL13 were localized to the cell membrane, nucleus, and cytoplasm. Three dimensional structure prediction and yeast two-hybrid assays were used to verify that PeJRL13 exists as a self-interacting homodimer in vivo. These findings provide an important reference for understanding the functions of specific moso bamboo JRL genes and for the effective selection of stress-related genes.
Highlights
Plant lectins are a structurally complex class of sugarbinding proteins that can be divided into several families (Damme et al, 2008)
These results suggest that PeJRL genes may be extensively involved in abiotic stress response and that their expression may be induced by hormones
Jacalin-related lectins are widespread in plants and are found in many species, including Arabidopsis, O. sativa, wheat, Z. mays, sorghum, and B. distachyon (Nagano et al, 2008; Jiang et al, 2010; Song et al, 2014)
Summary
Plant lectins are a structurally complex class of sugarbinding proteins that can be divided into several families (Damme et al, 2008). They contain at least one non-catalytic structural domain capable of reversibly binding sugars, and they can trigger a series of downstream biochemical cascades by binding to specific carbohydrates (Peumans and Van Damme, 1995; Sharon, 2007). Common structural domains in monocots include dirigent (20.2%), RXCC like (7.1%), PKc_like (6.9%), and P-loop_NTPase structural domains (6.8%), and more than 10% of the JRL lectins contain multiple jacalin structural domains (Song et al, 2014). The JRL proteins often form multimers consisting of two to eight monomers (Damme et al, 2008)
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