Journal Article

Genome-wide identification and expression pattern analysis of the kiwifruit GRAS transcription factor family in response to salt stress

Zhang, Mengjie, Yang, Na, Chen, Daming, Wen, Ke, Liu, Xiaozhen, Cai, Hanbing, Yin, Tuo, Li, Xulin, Wu, Jiexin, Yang, Xiuyao, Zhu, Ling, Zhang, Hanyao

2024

Overview

Background GRAS is a family of plant-specific transcription factors (TFs) that play a vital role in plant growth and development and response to adversity stress. However, systematic studies of the GRAS TF family in kiwifruit have not been reported. Results In this study, we used a bioinformatics approach to identify eighty-six AcGRAS TFs located on twenty-six chromosomes and phylogenetic analysis classified them into ten subfamilies. It was found that the gene structure is relatively conserved for these genes and that fragmental duplication is the prime force for the evolution of AcGRAS genes. However, the promoter region of the AcGRAS genes mainly contains cis-acting elements related to hormones and environmental stresses, similar to the results of GO and KEGG enrichment analysis, suggesting that hormone signaling pathways of the AcGRAS family play a vital role in regulating plant growth and development and adversity stress. Protein interaction network analysis showed that the AcGRAS51 protein is a relational protein linking DELLA, SCR, and SHR subfamily proteins. The results demonstrated that 81 genes were expressed in kiwifruit AcGRAS under salt stress, including 17 differentially expressed genes, 13 upregulated, and four downregulated. This indicates that the upregulated AcGRAS55 , AcGRAS69 , AcGRAS86 and other GRAS genes can reduce the salt damage caused by kiwifruit plants by positively regulating salt stress, thus improving the salt tolerance of the plants. Conclusions These results provide a theoretical basis for future exploration of the characteristics and functions of more AcGRAS genes. This study provides a basis for further research on kiwifruit breeding for resistance to salt stress. RT-qPCR analysis showed that the expression of 3 AcGRAS genes was elevated under salt stress, indicating that AcGRAS exhibited a specific expression pattern under salt stress conditions.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Abiotic stress / Actinidia / Amino acids / Analysis / Animal Genetics and Genomics / Bioinformatics / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Chromosomes / DNA binding proteins / Environmental stress / Evolutionary genetics / Expression patterns / Gene expression / Gene Expression Profiling / Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / Genes / Genetic aspects / Genetic engineering / Genome, Plant / Genome-wide analysis / Genomes / Genomics / GRAS transcription factors / Growth / Hormones / Influence / Kiwifruit / Life Sciences / Localization / Microarrays / Microbial Genetics and Genomics / Network analysis / Pattern analysis / Phylogenetics / Phylogeny / Plant Breeding / Plant Genetics and Genomics / Plant growth / Plant Proteins - metabolism / Plant resistance / Proteins / Proteomics / Salinity / Salinity tolerance / Salt stress / Salt stress (Botany) / Salt Tolerance / Stress, Physiological - genetics / Transcription factors / Transcription Factors - genetics / Transcription Factors - metabolism / Transcriptome / Vitamin C