Abstract
Type 2 C protein phosphatases (PP2Cs) represent the major group of protein phosphatases in plants and play important roles in various plant processes. In this study, 94 MtPP2C genes were identified from Medicago truncatula and further phylogenetically classified into 13 subfamilies, as supported by exon-intron organization and conserved motif composition. Collinearity analysis indicated that segmental duplication events played a crucial role in the expansion of MtPP2C gene families in M. truncatula. Furthermore, the expression profiles of MtPP2Cs under different abiotic treatments were analyzed using qRT-PCR. Results showed that these MtPP2Cs genes displayed different expression patterns in response to drought, cold and ABA stress conditions and some of the key stress responsive MtPP2Cs genes have been identified. Our study presents a comprehensive overview of the PP2C gene family in M. truncatula, which will be useful for further functional characterization of MtPP2Cs in plant drought and cold stress responses.
Highlights
PP2C proteins belong to monomer enzymes and the activity depends on Mg2+ and Mn2+
Many studies have shown that some PP2C genes are involved in the regulation of the ABA signaling pathway by modulating the kinase activity of SnRK or MAPK to respond to abiotic stresses[9]
In Arabidopsis, ABI1, ABI2 and HAB1 participate in plant abiotic stress/tolerance by negatively regulating ABA signaling[11,12,13]
Summary
Genome-wide Identification of PP2C Family Members in M. truncatula. To identify the PP2C genes, we searched the M. truncatula genome database (Plaza3.0 database) using the InterPro PP2C domain “IPR001932” as the key word and found 95 putative PP2C genes. These results suggest that the specific functions of different subfamily genes may be due to specific motifs This indicates that patterns of introns and motifs, which correlate well with the phylogenetic clades, strongly support their close evolutionary relationships among the MtPP2C genes within the same subfamilies. We obtained 24 MtPP2C genes showing significant differences in expression levels under cold stress, including 14 up-regulated and 10 down-regulated genes. The expression levels of five genes belonging to subfamily D changed significantly under cold treatment, four (MtPP2C34, MtPP2C35, MtPP2C36 and MtPP2C87) of which were down-regulated and one (MtPP2C18) was up-regulated. 11 MtPP2C genes showed obviously different expression levels, including six up-regulated and five down-regulated genes. Different expression patterns of MtPP2C genes may indicate different roles in response to different treatments
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