Abstract
Heat shock transcription factors (HSFs) regulate many environmental stress responses and biological processes in plants. Maize (Zea mays L.) is a major cash crop that is grown worldwide. However, the growth and yield of maize are affected by several adverse environmental stresses. Therefore, investigating the factors that regulate maize growth and development and resistance to abiotic stress is an essential task for developing stress-resilient maize varieties. Thus, a comprehensive genome-wide identification analysis was performed to identify HSFs genes in the maize genome. The current study identified 25 ZmHSFs, randomly distributed throughout the maize genome. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that ZmHSFs are divided into three classes and 13 sub-classes. Gene structure and protein motif analysis supported the results obtained through the phylogenetic analysis. Segmental duplication is shown to be responsible for the expansion of ZmHSFs. Most of the ZmHSFs are localized inside the nucleus, and the ZmHSFs which belong to the same group show similar physio-chemical properties. Previously reported and publicly available RNA-seq analysis revealed a major role of class A HSFs including ZmHSFA-1a and ZmHSFA-2a in all the maize growth stages, i.e., seed, vegetative, and reproductive development. Under abiotic stress conditions (heat, drought, cold, UV, and salinity), members of class A and B ZmHSFs are induced. Gene ontology and protein–protein interaction analysis indicated a major role of ZmHSFs in resistance to environmental stress and regulation of primary metabolism. To summarize, this study provides novel insights for functional studies on the ZmHSFs in maize breeding programs.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been an increasing trend to focus on the responses of plants to abiotic stresses due to global climate change [1]
This comprehensive study focused on the evolutionary analysis, expression profiling, GO, and PPI networks to explore the probable regulatory role played by ZmHSFs under benign and stress conditions
Phylogenetic analysis indicated the AtHSFA2, AtHSFC1 did not align with sub-class A2, C1 in the present study, which aligns with the results reported by Lin et al [41]
Summary
There has been an increasing trend to focus on the responses of plants to abiotic stresses due to global climate change [1]. Research has been focused on plant heat stress (HS) tolerance mechanisms, as higher temperatures have a negative effect on plant growth and production [2,3]. A major step in this process is the activation of stress-inducible genes, the expression of which is controlled by transcription factors (TFs). Several TFs families including heat shock transcription factors (HSFs), WRKY (named due to conserved WRKYGQK motif), v-myb avian myeloblastosis viral oncogene homolog (MYB), Petunia NAM, Arabidopsis ATAF1/2 and CUC2 (NAC), and dehydration responsiveelement binding transcriptional activator (DREB), etc., have been shown to positively regulate HS-responsive gene expression and improve plant HS tolerance [14,15]. The pioneering study by Nover et al [20] allowed the identification of the HSF gene family in various plant species, including essential crop plants [19]. The Heatster database (http://www.cibiv.at/services/hsf, accessed on 1 August 2021) currently holds 848 HSF sequences from 33 different plant species
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