Abstract
The calcineurin B-like interacting protein kinase (CIPK) protein family is a critical protein family in plant signaling pathways mediated by Ca2+, playing a pivotal role in plant stress response and growth. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study of the tomato CIPK gene family in response to abiotic stress has been reported. In this study, 22 members of the tomato CIPK gene family were successfully identified by using a combination of bioinformatics techniques and molecular analyses. The expression level of each member of tomato CIPK gene family under abiotic stress (low temperature, high salt, drought treatment) was determined by qRT-PCR. Results indicated that tomato CIPK demonstrated different degrees of responding to various abiotic stresses, and changes in SlCIPK1 and SlCIPK8 expression level were relatively apparent. The results of qRT-PCR showed that expression levels of SlCIPK1 increased significantly in early stages of cold stress, and the expression level of SlCIPK8 increased significantly during the three treatments at different time points, implicating Solanum lycopersicum CIPK1(SlCIPK1) and Solanum lycopersicum CIPK8 (SlCIPK8) involvement in abiotic stress response. SlCIPK1 and SlCIPK8 were silenced using Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS), and physiological indexes were detected by low temperature, drought, and high salt treatment. The results showed that plants silenced by SlCIPK1 and SlCIPK8 at the later stage of cold stress were significantly less resistant to cold than wild-type plants. SlCIPK1 and SlCIPK8 silenced plants had poor drought resistance, indicating a relationship between SlCIPK1 and SlCIPK8 with response to low temperature and drought resistance. This is the first study to uncover the nucleotide sequence for tomato CIPK family members and systematically study the changes of tomato CIPK family members under abiotic stress. Here, we investigate the CIPK family’s response under abiotic stress providing understanding into the signal transduction pathway. This study provides a theoretical basis for elucidating the function of tomato CIPK at low temperature and its molecular mechanism of regulating low temperatures.
Highlights
Plants are subject to various kinds of abiotic stress during their growth and development, such as high salt, drought, low temperature, and low potassium
In order to identify the members of tomato calcineurin B-like interacting protein kinase (CIPK) family, we conducted a localized tBLASTn comparison between the nucleotide sequences of the existing tomato annotation genes and the CIPK
We found that the amino acid sequence identity of different SlCIPKs ranged from 53% to 84%
Summary
Plants are subject to various kinds of abiotic stress during their growth and development, such as high salt, drought, low temperature, and low potassium. Ca2+ broadly participates in the signaling during plant growth and development and the regulation of responding to environmental stimuli [2,3]. The receptors on calcium ions receive this change and transmit this calcium signal downstream, causing a series of physiological and biochemical changes in the plant [4]. CBL needs to interact with a class of protein kinases (CBL-interacting protein kinase, CIPK) to activate downstream targets so as to regulate the physiological functions of plants [7,8,9,10]. According to the relationship between structural features and evolution, these kinases belong to the third class of SNF1-related protein kinases, group 3 (SnRK3) kinase
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