Genome-wide identification of bHLH transcription factors and expression analysis under drought stress in Pseudoroegneria libanotica at germination

Xingguan Zhai; Xia Wang; Xunzhe Yang; Qingxiang Huang; Dandan Wu; Yi Wang; Houyang Kang; Lina Sha; Xing Fan; Yonghong Zhou; Haiqin Zhang

doi:10.1007/s12298-024-01433-w

Genome-wide identification of bHLH transcription factors and expression analysis under drought stress in Pseudoroegneria libanotica at germination

Physiol Mol Biol Plants. 2024 Mar;30(3):467-481. doi: 10.1007/s12298-024-01433-w. Epub 2024 Mar 9.

Authors

Xingguan Zhai^{1

2}, Xia Wang², Xunzhe Yang², Qingxiang Huang², Dandan Wu^{1

2}, Yi Wang^{1

2}, Houyang Kang^{1

2}, Lina Sha^{1

3}, Xing Fan^{1

2}, Yonghong Zhou^{1

2}, Haiqin Zhang^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Crop Gene Exploration and Utilization in Southwest China, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, 611130 Sichuan China.
² Triticeae Research Institute, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, 611130 Sichuan China.
³ College of Grassland Science and Technology, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, 611130 Sichuan China.

PMID: 38633269
PMCID: PMC11018577 (available on 2025-03-01)
DOI: 10.1007/s12298-024-01433-w

Abstract

The basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor family is the second largest in plants. bHLH transcription factor is not only universally involved in plant growth and metabolism, including photomorphogenesis, light signal transduction, and secondary metabolism, but also plays an important role in plant response to stress. However, the function of bHLH TFs in Pseudoroegneria species has not been studied yet. Pseudoroegneria (Nevski) Á. Löve is a perennial genus of the Triticeae. Pseudoroegneria species are mostly distributed in arid/semi-arid areas and they show good drought tolerance. In this study, we identified 152 PlbHLH TFs in Pseudoroegneria libanotica, which could be classified into 15 groups. Collinearity analysis indicates that 122 PlbHLH genes share homology with wbHLH genes in wheat, and it has lower homology with AtbHLH genes in Arabidopsis. Based on transcriptome profiling under an experiment with three PEG concentrations (0%, 10%, and 20%), 10 up-regulated genes and 11 down-regulated PlbHLH genes were screened. Among them, PlbHLH6, PlbHLH55 and PlbHLH64 as candidate genes may be the key genes related to drought tolerance response at germination, and they have been demonstrated to respond to drought, salt, oxidative, heat, and heavy metal stress in yeast. This study lays the foundation for an in-depth study of the biological roles of PlbHLHs in Pse. libanotica, and discovered new drought-tolerance candidate genes to enhance the genetic background of Triticeae crops.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-024-01433-w.

Keywords: Drought stress; Pseudoroegneria; Seed germination; Transcription factor; bHLH.

© Prof. H.S. Srivastava Foundation for Science and Society 2024. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.