Genome-wide identification, classification, and expression analysis of the HSF gene family in pineapple (Ananas comosus)

Lulu Wang; Yanhui Liu; Mengnan Chai; Huihuang Chen; Mohammad Aslam; Xiaoping Niu; Yuan Qin; Hanyang Cai

doi:10.7717/peerj.11329

Genome-wide identification, classification, and expression analysis of the HSF gene family in pineapple (Ananas comosus)

PeerJ. 2021 Apr 27:9:e11329. doi: 10.7717/peerj.11329. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Lulu Wang¹, Yanhui Liu¹, Mengnan Chai¹, Huihuang Chen¹, Mohammad Aslam¹, Xiaoping Niu², Yuan Qin^{1

2}, Hanyang Cai¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Lab of Ecological Pest Control for Fujian and Taiwan Crops; Key Lab of Genetics, Breeding and Multiple Utilization of Crops, Ministry of Education; Fujian Provincial Key Lab of Haixia Applied Plant Systems Biology, College of Life Sciences, Fuji, Fuzhou, Fujian, China.
² State Key Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Subtropical Agro-Bioresources, Guangxi Key Lab of Sugarcane Biology, College of Agriculture, Guangxi University, Nanning, Guangxi, China.

Abstract

Transcription factors (TFs), such as heat shock transcription factors (HSFs), usually play critical regulatory functions in plant development, growth, and response to environmental cues. However, no HSFs have been characterized in pineapple thus far. Here, we identified 22 AcHSF genes from the pineapple genome. Gene structure, motifs, and phylogenetic analysis showed that AcHSF families were distinctly grouped into three subfamilies (12 in Group A, seven in Group B, and four in Group C). The AcHSF promoters contained various cis-elements associated with stress, hormones, and plant development processes, for instance, STRE, WRKY, and ABRE binding sites. The majority of HSFs were expressed in diverse pineapple tissues and developmental stages. The expression of AcHSF-B4b/AcHSF-B4c and AcHSF-A7b/AcHSF-A1c were enriched in the ovules and fruits, respectively. Six genes (AcHSF-A1a , AcHSF-A2, AcHSF-A9a, AcHSF-B1a, AcHSF-B2a, and AcHSF-C1a) were transcriptionally modified by cold, heat, and ABA. Our results provide an overview and lay the foundation for future functional characterization of the pineapple HSF gene family.

Keywords: ABA; Cold; Heat; Phylogenetic analysis; Pineapple; AcHSF.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U1605212, 31761130074 and 31970333 to Yuan Qin; 31700279 to Hanyang Cai) and a Guangxi Distinguished Experts Fellowship to Yuan Qin. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.