Genome-wide Identification and Analysis of CONSTANS-like Gene Family in Nicotiana tabacum

doi:10.11983/CBB20147

Abstract

Abstract: Nicotiana tabacum (tobacco) is one of the model plants for molecular biology research as well as an important economic crop in the world. A suitable living environment is essential for the growth and reproduction of tobacco. CONSTANS-like (COL) family proteins are not only key regulators for flowering time, but also play important roles in stress response of plants. Our aim was to identify the COL family members, analyze their gene structure, evolutionary relationship, transcriptional regulatory elements and expression patterns, and explore their possible functions in response to cold stress in tobacco. We identified a total of 15 COL genes with similar physiochemical properties in tobacco. Evolutionary analysis divided all COL genes into three categories, and similar intron structure and motif distribution were observed among genes within each category. The promoter regions of tobacco COL genes contain a large number of cis-acting elements related to responses to light, low temperature, drought and phyto hormone. Gene expression analysis showed that low temperature significantly affected the expression of COL genes in tobacco, but the effects on different genes were different. Our study showed different parental (N. sylvestris (maternal) and N. tomentosiformis (paternal)) expression bias between different COL genes in tobacco, and most of the bias patterns were maintained from 6-7 leaf stage to budding stage.

Key words: Nicotiana tabacum, COL, phylogeny, low temperature, expression bias

Yawen Zhang, Shan Liang, Guoyun Xu, Wuxia Guo, Shulin Deng. Genome-wide Identification and Analysis of CONSTANS-like Gene Family in Nicotiana tabacum[J]. Chinese Bulletin of Botany, 2021, 56(1): 33-43.

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URL: https://www.chinbullbotany.com/EN/10.11983/CBB20147

https://www.chinbullbotany.com/EN/Y2021/V56/I1/33

Figures/Tables 4

Figure 1 Phylogenetic tree of COL proteins from five species COL protein sequences of Nicotiana tabacum (Nitab), Arabidopsis thaliana (At), Solanum lycopersicum (Solyc), Oryza sativa (Os), and Zea mays (Zma) were downloaded from NCBI database. The phylogenetic tree was constructed by neighbor joining method with Clustal, bar indicated evolutionary distance.

Figure 2 Gene structures of COL genes (A), and conserved motifs (B) and amino acid sequences (C) of conserved motifs of COL proteins in tobacco Differently colored rectangles representing different protein conserved motifs as well as untranslated region (UTR) (green) and coding sequence (CDS) (yellow). Scale bars indicating gene sequence length (A) and protein sequence length (B), respectively, and the ordinate numbers indicating the frequency of corresponding amino acid in the conserved motifs (C).

Figure 3 Phylogenetic tree of the COL family proteins in tobacco and its parents The COL proteins of Nicotiana tabacum (Nitab) (progeny), N. tomentosiformis (Nito) (paternal), and N. sylvestris (Nisy) (maternal) were downloaded from Solgenomics.net. The phylogenetic tree was constructed by neighbor joining method with Clustal.

Figure 4 Expression of all COL genes (A) and five homologous genes pairs (B)-(F) in tobacco leaves at different developmental stages under cold treatment FC(S): Fold change at 6-7 leaf stage under 12°C treatment; FC(F): Fold change at budding stage under 12°C treatment; ck_S: 6-7 leaf stage under 26°C; ck_F: Budding stage under 26°C; cold_S: 6-7 leaf stage under 12°C treatment; cold_F: Budding stage under 12°C treatment; Black: Orthologs from paternal plant; Gray: Orthologs from maternal plant; the relative expression level is the average of 3 biological replicates, the error bar represents standard deviation, and Student’s t-test is used for significance test, * P<0.05, ** P<0.01, *** P<0.001, **** P<0.0001, and ns means not significant.

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