Document Type : Original research paper

Authors

• seyedhamidreza Hashemipetroudi ¹
• Samira Mohammadi ²
• Farzaneh Fatemi ³

¹ Genetics and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute of Tabarestan (GABIT), Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University, PO Box 578, Sari

² Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University

³ Bu Ali Sina University

Abstract

Heat shock proteins (HSPs), molecular chaperones with many activities, are essential to plant growth, development, and stress responses. To make crops more salt- and drought-resistant, plant breeders have considered halophytic plant. Aeluropus littoralis, a halophyte monocote grass, is one potential model species to discover new stress-response genes. Here, exon/intron structure, conserved motifs/ domains, and expression patterns of HSP100 gene family were identified in the genome of A. littoralis. This study found six unique AlHSP100 non-repetitive genes, revealing remarkable structural and physicochemical variations between the subfamilies. Phylogenetic and motif analyses revealed that proteins from the same subfamily (AlHSP100.1-4) and proteins from other subfamilies (AlHSP100.5-6) have similar types, ordering, and quantities of motifs. Finally, the expression of AlHSP100.3 gene was analyzed using RT-qPCR under dehydration, salt, cold, and phytohormone abscisic acid stress treatments, revealed that their expression patterns vary in response to abiotic stresses. The presence of stress-dependent regulation of the HSP100.3 gene, as evidenced by the early response to PEG treatment and the late response to cold stress, is likely associated with the cis-regulatory elements located upstream of this gene. This study provides more valuable information to deepen our understanding of the abiotic stress responses by HSP100 genes in A. littoralis.

Keywords

• Abiotic stress, gene expression
• halophyte
• heat shock proteins (HSPs)
• transcriptome analysis

Main Subjects

• Plant bioinformatics