14-3-3 proteins are key regulatory factors in plants and are involved in a broad range of physiological processes. We addressed the evolutionary history of 14-3-3s from 46 angiosperm species, including basal angiosperm Amborella and major lineage of monocotyledons and eudicotyledons. Orthologs of Arabidopsis isoforms were detected. There were several rounds of duplication events in the evolutionary history of the 14-3-3 protein family in plants. At least four subfamilies (iota, epsilon, kappa, and psi) formed as a result of ancient duplication in a common ancestor of angiosperm plants. Recent duplication events followed by gene loss in plant lineage, among others Brassicaceae, Fabaceae, and Poaceae, further shaped the high diversity of 14-3-3 isoforms in plants. Coexpression data showed that 14-3-3 proteins formed different functional groups in different species. In some species, evolutionarily related groups of 14-3-3 proteins had coexpressed together under certain physiological conditions, whereas in other species, closely related isoforms expressed in the opposite manner. A possible explanation is that gene duplication and loss is accompanied by functional plasticity of 14-3-3 proteins.
Keywords: 14-3-3 proteins; MrBayes; coexpression; gene family; molecular phylogeny; whole-genome duplication.