Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2021, Vol. 56 ›› Issue (5): 544-558.DOI: 10.11983/CBB21014

• EXPERIMENTAL COMMUNICATIONS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Identification of the Cysteine Protease Family and Corresponding miRNAs in Jatropha curcas and Their Response to Chill-hardening

Dandan Wu1, Yongkun Chen1,2, Yu Yang1, Chunyan Kong1, Ming Gong1,*()   

  1. 1Key Laboratory of Biomass Energy and Environmental Biotechnology of Yunnan Province, Engineering Research Center of Sustainable Development and Utilization of Biomass Energy, Ministry of Education, School of Life Sciences, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming 650500, China
    2School of Life Sciences, Xinjiang Normal University, Urumqi 830054, China
  • Received:2021-01-18 Accepted:2021-05-07 Online:2021-09-01 Published:2021-08-31
  • Contact: Ming Gong

Abstract: Jatropha curcas is a kind of promising energy plants, but also a chilling-sensitive plant, which can be chill- hardening at 12°C with significant improvement of its chilling tolerance. In this study, the cysteine protease gene family of J. curcas and their corresponding miRNAs were identified at the genome-wide level. The results showed that a total of 39 cysteine protease genes were identified in J. curcas genome, which were located on 11 chromosomes and could be divided into six subfamilies (C1A, C2, C12, C13, C14 and C15); all encoding 181-2 158 amino acids with Cys and His active sites. Based on the sequencing results of miRNAome and degradome, 283 miRNAs were found to be targeted to 14 members of cysteine protease gene family. In addition, the co-expression analysis of those miRNAs targeting to JcDEK1, JcRD21B and JcXBCP3L during chill-hardening demonstrated significantly negative correlation during the chill-hardening at 12°C, suggesting that these miRNAs are involved in the regulation of the cysteine protease genes, and this regulation should be related to the enhancement of chilling tolerance induced by the chill-hardening. This study will be helpful for better understanding the function of cysteine protease gene family in J. curcas and the interaction of the family genes with their corresponding miRNAs, and how this interaction regulates the response of J. curcas to low temperature.

Key words: Jatropha curcas, cysteine protease, gene family, microRNAs, low temperature response