Abstract
Ovate family proteins (OFPs) are a family of plant growth regulators that play diverse roles in many aspects of physiological processes. OFPs have been characterized in various plant species including tomato, Arabidopsis, and rice. However, little is known about OFPs in woody species. Here, a total of 30 PtOFP genes were identified from the genome of Populus trichocarpa and were further grouped into four subfamilies based on their sequence similarities. Gene expression analysis indicated that some members of the PtOFP gene family displayed tissue/organ-specific patterns. Analysis of cis-acting elements in the promoter as well as gene expression by hormone treatment revealed putative involvement of PtOFPs in hormonal response. Furthermore, PtOFP1 (Potri.006G107700) was further experimentally demonstrated to act as a transcriptional repressor. Yeast two-hybrid assay showed physical interactions of PtOFP1 with other proteins, which suggests that they might function in various cellular processes by forming protein complexes. In addition, overexpression of PtOFP1 in Arabidopsis conferred enhanced tolerance to PEG-induced drought stress at seedling stage, as well as a higher survival rate than the wild type at mature stage. These results provide a systematic analysis of the Populus OFP gene family and lay a foundation for functional characterization of this gene family.
Highlights
Ovate family proteins (OFPs), which contain a 70-amino acid conserved domain at the C-terminal region named OVATE or DUF623, are previously characterized as the novel plant-specific growth regulators (Hackbusch et al, 2005)
A total of 30 genes were identified in the P. trichocarpa genome, which we designated as PtOFP1-PtOFP30 (Table 1)
grand average of hydropathicity (GRAVY) values are defined as the sum of the hydropathy values of all amino acids divided by the protein length
Summary
Ovate family proteins (OFPs), which contain a 70-amino acid (aa) conserved domain at the C-terminal region named OVATE or DUF623 (the Domain of Unknown Function 623), are previously characterized as the novel plant-specific growth regulators (Hackbusch et al, 2005). A single mutation of OVATE leading to a premature stop codon caused the Abbreviations: Pt, Populus trichocarpa; At, Arabidopsis thaliana; OFP, ovate family protein; aa, amino acid; bp, base pair; MW, molecular weight; ORF, open-reading frame; pI, isoelectric points; qRT-PCR, real-time quantitative reverse transcription PCR; ABREs, ABA-responsive elements; GSDS, gene structure display server; FPKM, fragments per kilobase of transcript per million fragments mapped. OFP family in four types of early land plants including Marchantia polymorpha (Mp), P. patens (Pp), S. moellendorffii (Sm), and Sphagnum fallax (Sf) were investigated to provide insights into evolutionary history (Dangwal and Das, 2018)
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