Abstract
Soybean is one of the most important legumes, providing high-quality protein for humans. The caffeic acid O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene has previously been demonstrated to be a critical gene that regulates lignin production in plant cell walls and plays an important function in plant growth and development. However, the COMT gene family has not been studied in soybeans. In this study, 55 COMT family genes in soybean were identified by phylogenetic analysis and divided into two groups, I and II. The analysis of conserved domains showed that all GmCOMTs genes contained Methyltransferase-2 domains. Further prediction of cis-acting elements showed that GmCOMTs genes were associated with growth, light, stress, and hormonal responses. Eventually, based on the genomic data of soybean under different stresses, the results showed that the expression of GmCOMTs genes was different under different stresses, such as salt and drought stress. This study has identified and characterized the COMT gene family in soybean, which provides an important theoretical basis for further research on the biological functions of COMT genes and promotes revealing the role of GmCOMTs genes under stress resistance.
Highlights
Soybean is one of the world’s most significant annual leguminous plants, capable of providing humans with high-quality plant protein and oil [1]
To find all possible members of the caffeic acid O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene family in soybean, the known Arabidopsis COMT protein sequences were used as query sequences in a BlastP search against the soybean genome database
The coding sequence length of the 55 GmCOMTs identified varied from 330 bp (GmCOMT30) to 1149 bp (GmCOMT24), the genomic sequence length ranges from 933 bp (GmCOMT19) to 9540 bp (GmCOMT7), and the transcript sequence length ranges from 330 bp (GmCOMT30) to 3295 bp (GmCOMT34)
Summary
Soybean is one of the world’s most significant annual leguminous plants, capable of providing humans with high-quality plant protein and oil [1]. Soybean lodging and biological or abiotic stress are important factors affecting soybean yield [3]. As a result, increasing soybean lodging and stress resistance is critical for producing high-yielding, stable-yielding, and high-quality cultivars. A cell wall is a thick wall that exists on the exterior of cells It plays an important role in the growth and development of plants, such as preserving the shape of cells, enhancing the mechanical strength of cells, and participating in the transmission of information between cells [4]. Its components enable the plants to respond to biological or abiotic stresses and resist the invasion of pathogens in the first place [6]
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