Abstract
Main conclusion
A large-scale bioinformatics analysis revealed the origin and evolution of GT47 gene family, and identified two clades of intron-poor genes with putative functions in drought stress responses and seed development in maize.
Glycosyltransferase family 47 (GT47) genes encode β-galactosyltransferases and β-glucuronyltransferases that synthesize pectin, xyloglucans and xylan, which are important components of the plant cell wall. In this study, we performed a systematic and large-scale bioinformatics analysis of GT47 gene family using 352 GT47 proteins from 15 species ranging from cyanobacteria to seed plants. The analysis results showed that GT47 family may originate in cyanobacteria and expand along the evolutionary trajectory to moss. Further analysis of 47 GT47 genes in maize revealed that they can divide into five clades with diverse exon–intron structures. Among these five clades, two were mainly composed with intron-poor genes, which may originate in the moss. Gene duplication analysis revealed that the expansion of GT47 gene family in maize was significantly driven from tandem duplication events and segmental duplication events. Significantly, almost all duplicated genes are intron-poor genes. Expression analysis indicated that several intron-poor GT47 genes may be involved in the drought stress response and seed development in maize. This work provides insight into the origin and evolutionary process, expansion mechanisms and expression patterns of GT47 genes, thus facilitating their functional investigations in the future.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Special Fund for Basic Scientific Research of Central College (QN2011114 and 2452015412), the Fund of Northwest A & F University (Z111021603 and Z111021403), the Youth Talent Program of State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology for Arid Areas (CSBAAQN2016001), and Projects of Youth Technology New Star of Shaanxi Province (2017KJXX-67).
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Supplementary material 2 FPKM values of Gene expression at transcriptional and translational levels and translational efficiencies of GT47 genes (XLSX 17 kb)
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Supplementary material 4 List of predicted regulatory relationships between TFs and GT47 genes with putative functions in drought stress responses and seed development in maize (XLSX 21 kb)
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Tan, J., Miao, Z., Ren, C. et al. Evolution of intron-poor clades and expression patterns of the glycosyltransferase family 47. Planta 247, 745–760 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-017-2821-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-017-2821-6