Genome-wide characterization and expression analysis of soybean trihelix gene family

Wei Liu; Yanwei Zhang; Wei Li; Yanhui Lin; Caijie Wang; Ran Xu; Lifeng Zhang

doi:10.7717/peerj.8753

Genome-wide characterization and expression analysis of soybean trihelix gene family

PeerJ. 2020 Mar 13:8:e8753. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8753. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Wei Liu^{1

2}, Yanwei Zhang^{1

2}, Wei Li^{1

2}, Yanhui Lin³, Caijie Wang^{1

2}, Ran Xu^{1

2}, Lifeng Zhang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Crop Research Institute, Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Jinan, Shandong, China.
² Shandong Engineering Laboratory of Featured Crops, Jinan, China.
³ Institute of Food Crops, Hainan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Haikou, China.

Abstract

Trihelix transcription factors play multiple roles in plant growth, development and various stress responses. In this study, we identified 71 trihelix family genes in the soybean genome. These trihelix genes were located at 19 out of 20 soybean chromosomes unevenly and were classified into six distinct subfamilies: GT-1, GT-2, GTγ, SIP1, SH4 and GTδ. The gene structure and conserved functional domain of these trihelix genes were similar in the same subfamily but diverged between different subfamilies. Thirteen segmental duplicated gene pairs were identified and all of them experienced a strong purifying selective pressure during evolution. Various stress-responsive cis-elements presented in the promoters of soybean trihelix genes, suggesting that the trihelix genes might respond to the environmental stresses in soybean. The expression analysis suggests that trihelix genes are involved in diverse functions during soybean development, flood or salinity tolerance, and plant immunity. Our results provide genomic information of the soybean trihelix genes and a basis for further characterizing their roles in response to environmental stresses.

Keywords: Gene expression; Genome-wide analysis; Soybean; Trihelix transcription factor.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Agricultural Scientific and Technological Innovation Project of Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CXGC2018E01) and China Agriculture Research System (CARS-04-CES16). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.