Abstract
Plant C2 domain proteins play essential biological functions in numerous plants. In this study, 180 soybean C2 domain genes were identified by screening. Phylogenetic relationship analysis revealed that C2 domain genes fell into three distinct groups with diverged gene structure and conserved functional domain. Chromosomal location analysis indicated that C2 domain genes mapped to 20 chromosomes. The transcript profiles based on RNA-seq data showed that GmC2-58, GmC2-88, and GmC2-148 had higher levels of expression under salt, drought, and abscisic acid (ABA) treatments. GmC2-148, encoding a cell membrane-localized protein, had the highest level of response to various treatments according to real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) analysis. Under salt and drought stresses, the soybean plants with GmC2-148 transgenic hairy roots showed delayed leaf rolling, a higher content of proline (Pro), and lower contents of H2O2, O2– and malondialdehyde (MDA) compared to those of the empty vector (EV) plants. The results of transgenic Arabidopsis in salt and drought treatments were consistent with those in soybean treatments. In addition, the soybean plants with GmC2-148 transgenic hairy roots increased transcript levels of several abiotic stress-related marker genes, including COR47, NCDE3, NAC11, WRKY13, DREB2A, MYB84, bZIP44, and KIN1 which resulted in enhanced abiotic stress tolerance in soybean. These results indicate that C2 domain genes are involved in response to salt and drought stresses, and this study provides a genome-wide analysis of the C2 domain family in soybean.
Highlights
Environmental stresses caused by such factors as salt and drought significantly affect plant growth and metabolic processes, threaten the survival of plants, and often lead to reduction in yield (Bohnert et al, 1995)
To establish the role of the soybean C2 domain genes in response to stresses, we evaluated their response to various treatments, which include salt and drought stresses, as well as abscisic acid (ABA) treatment
In order to gain more insights, we analyzed abiotic stress responses of C2 domain genes by obtaining transcriptome data from soybean exposed to salt, drought, and ABA treatments
Summary
Environmental stresses caused by such factors as salt and drought significantly affect plant growth and metabolic processes, threaten the survival of plants, and often lead to reduction in yield (Bohnert et al, 1995). Many gene families related to abiotic stress have been identified, including regulatory factors and regulatory proteins, such as NAC, AP2/ERF, MYB, MYC transcription factors (Zhao et al, 2017), and C2 domain proteins, that are involved in plant signaling pathways (Liu et al, 2019). The C2 domain is a typical intracellular protein module (Chapman et al, 1996). Being a Ca2+dependent membrane targeting domain, this domain shows Ca2+-dependent phospholipid binding activity and a higher sensitivity to salt and drought stresses (Banci et al, 2002). The Ca2+ binding sites of most C2 domain proteins are associated with the presence of five aspartic acid residues, which are highly conserved in plants and animals (Lopez-Nicolas et al, 2006)
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