Abstract
The ethylene response factor (ERF) family is one of the largest families of plant-specific transcription factors, and plays significant roles in plant growth and development, and stress tolerance processes. To understand the different structure and expression pattern of the ERF family, a total of 209 poplar ERF transcription factor genes were identified in silico. Based on the alignment of AP2/ERF domains, 209 PtERF proteins were classified into ten phylogenetic groups (I–X), and amino acid residues Gly-5 (G), Arg-7 (R), Glu-17 (E), Trp-36 (W), Leu-37 (L), Gly-38 (G), and Ala-46 (A) are conserved among these proteins. Protein structure analysis revealed that all poplar ERF family members contained the WLG motif (motif-1), but motif-6 was mainly conserved in the ERF subfamily. In addition, 209 genes were classified into three clusters under the salt stress condition: the lowly expressed Cluster (L), intermediately expressed Cluster (M1 and M2), and highly expressed Cluster (H1 and H2), in which some genes from highly expressed cluster were involved in salt stress response. Moreover, quantitative RT-PCR was used to analyze the tissue-specific expression pattern of 71 highly expressed genes. All of these results are of interest to better understand how and where each ERF functions in poplar.
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Wang, S., Yao, W., Zhou, B. et al. Structure analysis and expression pattern of the ERF transcription factor family in poplar. Acta Physiol Plant 38, 239 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-016-2242-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-016-2242-3