A comprehensive analysis of cotton VQ gene superfamily reveals their potential and extensive roles in regulating cotton
- PDF / 7,438,740 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 87 Downloads / 169 Views
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
A comprehensive analysis of cotton VQ gene superfamily reveals their potential and extensive roles in regulating cotton abiotic stress Pengyun Chen1, Fei wei1,2, Shuaishuai Cheng1,3, Liang Ma1, Hantao Wang1, Meng Zhang1, Guangzhi Mao1, Jianhua Lu1, Pengbo Hao1,3, Adeel Ahmad1, Lijiao Gu1, Qiang Ma1, Aimin Wu1, Hengling Wei1* and Shuxun Yu1*
Abstract Background: Valine-glutamine (VQ) motif-containing proteins play important roles in plant growth, development and abiotic stress response. For many plant species, the VQ genes have been identified and their functions have been described. However, little is known about the origin, evolution, and functions (and underlying mechanisms) of the VQ family genes in cotton. Results: In this study, we comprehensively analyzed the characteristics of 268 VQ genes from four Gossypium genomes and found that the VQ proteins evolved into 10 clades, and each clade had a similar structural and conservative motif. The expansion of the VQ gene was mainly through segmental duplication, followed by dispersal. Expression analysis revealed that many GhVQs might play important roles in response to salt and drought stress, and GhVQ18 and GhVQ84 were highly expressed under PEG and salt stress. Further analysis showed that GhVQs were co-expressed with GhWRKY transcription factors (TFs), and microRNAs (miRNAs) could hybridize to their cis-regulatory elements. Conclusions: The results in this study broaden our understanding of the VQ gene family in plants, and the analysis of the structure, conserved elements, and expression patterns of the VQs provide a solid foundation for exploring their specific functions in cotton responding to abiotic stresses. Our study provides significant insight into the potential functions of VQ genes in cotton. Keywords: Gossypium, Valine glutamine (VQ), Phylogenetic, Expression analysis
Background The VQ genes form a large gene family with important roles in growth, development and abiotic stress tolerance in plants [1–3]. The VQ proteins have a conserved VQ motif [F**hVQ*hTG (F, phenylalanine; *, any amino acid; h, hydrophobic residue; V, valine; Q, glutamine; T, * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] 1 State Key Laboratory of Cotton Biology, Institute of Cotton Research of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Anyang 455000, Henan, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
tryptophan; G, glycine)] [4, 5] and interact with WRKY TFs via the conserved residues V and Q. In Arabidopsis thanliana, many VQ genes have been reported to function in development and responses to abiotic stress. For example, AtVQ23 (sigma factor-binding protein 1, SIB1), and AtVQ16 (SIB2) were found to interact with AtWRKY33 to increase the resistance of Arabidopsis plants to Botrytis cinerea [6]. In another study, AtVQ16 and AtVQ23 have also been proven could interact with AtWRKY57, and AtVQ16 and AtVQ23 can enhance the
© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Att
Data Loading...
