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Understanding the role of SWEET genes in fruit development and abiotic stress in pomegranate (Punica granatum L.)

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Abstract

Background

The Sugar Will Eventually Be Exported Transporters (SWEET), consisting of the MtN3 and salvia domain, are sugar transporters having an active role in diverse activities in plants such as pollen nutrition, phloem loading, nectar secretion, reproductive tissue development, and plant-pathogen interaction. The SWEET genes have been characterized only in a few fruit crop species.

Methods and results

In this study, a total of 15 SWEET genes were identified in the pomegranate (Punica granatum) genome. The gene structure, transmembrane (TM) helices, domain architecture, and phylogenetic relationships of these genes were evaluated using computational approaches. Genes were further classified as Semi-SWEETs or SWEETs based on the TM domains. Similarly, pomegranate, Arabidopsis, rice, and soybean SWEETs were studied together to classify into major groups. In addition, analysis of RNAseq transcriptome data was performed to study SWEEET gene expression dynamics in different tissue. The expression suggests that SWEETs are mostly expressed in pomegranate peel. In addition, PgSWEET13 was found to be differentially expressed under high salinity stress in pomegranate. Further, quantitative PCR analysis confirmed the expression of four candidate genes in leaf and stem tissues.

Conclusion

The information provided here will help to understand the role of SWEET genes in fruit development and under abiotic stress conditions in pomegranate.

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Data availability

All the data provided as electronic supplementary material along with the article.

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Acknowledgements

Authors are thankful to the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), India for the Ramalingaswami fellowship to HS; Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Fellowship (SPMF) to SV, and Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) to YS and VK; University Grants Commission (UGC) for JRF to SK, SS, and GR. The authors are also thankful to Dr. SM Shivaraj for his help in English improvement and valuable suggestions.

Funding

Department of Biotechnology (DBT), India; Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI), Mohali, India

    Surbhi Kumawat, Yogesh Sharma, Sanskriti Vats, Sreeja Sudhakaran, Shivani Sharma, Rushil Mandlik, Gaurav Raturi, Virender Kumar, Nitika Rana, Amit Kumar & Humira Sonah

  2. Department of Biotechnology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

    Surbhi Kumawat, Sreeja Sudhakaran, Rushil Mandlik, Gaurav Raturi & Nitika Rana

  3. National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI), Sector 80, SAS Nagar, Mohali, Punjab, 140306, India

    Rupesh Deshmukh

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  1. Surbhi Kumawat
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Contributions

SK performed qPCR analysis and transcriptome profiling, wrote the first draft of the MS; YS, SV, SS, SS, and RM, contributed in drafting and data analysis, GR, VK, and NR, performed computational analysis, HS conceptualize the study, supervised and finalized the draft.

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Correspondence to Rupesh Deshmukh.

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Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

11033_2021_6961_MOESM1_ESM.tif

Supplementary file1 (TIF 26384 kb) Supplementary Figure 1 Phylogenetic tree of SWEET genes identified in Punica granatum. The clade I, clade II, clade III, and clade IV is marked in red, purple, blue, and green, respectively. Pomegranate SWEETs is abbreviated as Pg.

11033_2021_6961_MOESM2_ESM.tif

Supplementary file2 (TIF 26390 kb) Supplementary Figure 2 Conserved motifs in the protein sequences of 15 SWEETs identified in the pomegranate genome (PgSWEETs). The conserved motifs were identified by the MEME server (http://meme-suite.org/).

Supplementary file3 (XLSX 9 kb) Supplementary Table 1 Details of Primers used for Quantitative Real-Time PCR (qPCR)

11033_2021_6961_MOESM4_ESM.xlsx

Supplementary file4 (XLSX 9 kb) Supplementary Table 2 Details of Blastp results performed using BioEdit showing highest bit score against respective queries from Arabidopsis thaliana, Glycine max, and Oryza sativa

11033_2021_6961_MOESM5_ESM.xlsx

Supplementary file5 (XLSX 9 kb) Supplementary Table 3 Conserved domain analysis of identified Pomegranate SWEET using NCBI conserved Domain Search

11033_2021_6961_MOESM6_ESM.xlsx

Supplementary file6 (XLSX 10 kb) Supplementary Table 4 Biosequence analysis of Pomegranate SWEET using profile hidden Markov Models (HMMER) (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/hmmer/)

11033_2021_6961_MOESM7_ESM.xlsx

Supplementary file7 (XLSX 9 kb) Supplementary Table 5 Transmembrane domain identified by using TMHMM and SOSUI servers in Pomegranate SWEET

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Kumawat, S., Sharma, Y., Vats, S. et al. Understanding the role of SWEET genes in fruit development and abiotic stress in pomegranate (Punica granatum L.). Mol Biol Rep 49, 1329–1339 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-021-06961-2

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