Abstract
The calmodulin-binding transcription activator (CAMTA), as one of the most distinctive families of transcription factors, plays an important role in plant growth and development and in the stress response. However, it is currently unknown whether CAMTA exists in cucumbers and what its function is. In this study, we first identified four CAMTA genes in the cucumber genome using a genome-wide search method. Subsequently, we analyzed their physical and chemical properties, gene structure, protein domains, and phylogenetic relationships. The results show that the structure of CsCAMTAs is similar to that of other plants, and a phylogenetic analysis divides them into three groups. The analysis of cis-acting elements shows that most CsCAMTAs contain a variety of hormones and stress-related elements. The RT-PCR analysis shows that CsCAMTAs have different expression levels in different tissues and can be induced by IAA, ABA, MeJA, NaCl, and PEG. Finally, we analyzed the expression pattern of CsCAMTAs’ alternative spliceosomes under salt and drought stress. The results show that the expression levels of the different spliceosomes are affected by the type of stress and the duration of stress. These data indicate that CsCAMTAs participate in growth and development and in the stress response in cucumbers, a finding which lays the foundation for future CsCAMTAs’ functional research.
Highlights
As one of the most important secondary messengers in plant signal transmission [1], Ca2+ signals play an important role in plant growth, development, and response to external stimuli [2]
Regarding how CsCAMTAs interact with CaM, our research found that all CsCAMTAs contain IQ motifs and CAMBD, which indicates that CsCAMTAs can bind to CaM in a calcium-dependent manner and can bind to CaM in a calcium-independent manner
The results show that the CsCAMTA gene family is highly conserved in the evolutionary process
Summary
As one of the most important secondary messengers in plant signal transmission [1], Ca2+ signals play an important role in plant growth, development, and response to external stimuli [2]. Calmodulin (CaM), calcium-dependent protein kinase (CDPK) and calcineurin B-like protein (CBL) that are present in the cell bind to Ca2+ and convert extracellular signals into intracellular signals [3]. In the downstream of the CaM signaling pathway, CaM can combine with a variety of transcription factors (TFs) to cause highly specific responses. The calmodulin-binding transcription activator (CAMTA), as one of them, exists widely in organisms and plays a very important role [4]. CAMTAs have several conserved functional domains, including a unique DNA binding domain (CG-1), a transcription-associated immuno globulin-like domain (TIG), an ankyrin repeats (ANK), an isoleucine glutamine domain (IQ), and a Ca2+ dependent CaM binding domain (CaMBD) [5,6]. The existence of CAMTA has been identified in many eukaryotes, including Arabidopsis [5], rice [7], tomatoes [8], tobacco [9], maize [10], soybeans [11], strawberries [12], wheat [13], and flax [14]
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