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Le4 Is an Epicotyl Preferential Homologue of the Soybean Seed-Specific Le1 Lectin and the Vegetative Le3 Lectin Genes

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Abstract

Legume lectins play important roles in signaling and defense. The best known legume lectinin soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] is the seed-specific soybean agglutinin (Le1). Recently, we showed that the promoters of two Le1 homologues, Le2 and Le3, drive β-glucuronidase (GUS) gene expression in transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana. In the present study, five lectin copies (Le1–Le5) were identified in the soybean genome sequence. Transcript profiles were investigated for Le1–Le4 in 2-week-old soybean seedlings using real-time qPCR and compared with public RNA-Seq-based transcript profiles. Le3 transcripts are preferentially present in leaves, flowers, and vegetative tissues, while Le4 transcripts are preferentially present in seedling nodes and epicotyls. Whereas Le2 and Le5 are likely non-expressed pseudogenes, Le3 and Le4 were further investigated for possible tertiary structure and for presence of cis-regulatory promoter motifs. Models of LE3 and LE4 tertiary structures show high similarity to the LE1 structure, although differences in the active sites allow for differences in substrates. Our results also show that several interesting cis-regulatory motifs are present. Furthermore, we show that three duplication events have led to the formation of these five lectin genes, one event of which corresponds with the most recent soybean genome duplication at 13 Mya.

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Abbreviations

Mya:

Million years ago

qPCR:

Quantitative polymerase chain reaction

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Tanya Copley, Christine Ide, and Caroline Traynor for technical assistance; Ulrika Egertsdotter for helpful technical discussions on the qRT-PCR experiment; and Bengt Svensson for critical review of the Le3 and Le4 tertiary structure models. This work was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery grant to M.V. Strömvik. The authors also acknowledge support from the Centre SÈVE.

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  1. Department of Plant Science, McGill University, 21111 Lakeshore Road, Sainte Anne de Bellevue, QC, H9X 3V9, Canada

    Muhammad Chragh, Yevgen Zolotarov, Hanaa Saeed & Martina V. Strömvik

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  1. Muhammad Chragh
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  2. Yevgen Zolotarov
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  3. Hanaa Saeed
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  4. Martina V. Strömvik
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Correspondence to Martina V. Strömvik.

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Chragh, M., Zolotarov, Y., Saeed, H. et al. Le4 Is an Epicotyl Preferential Homologue of the Soybean Seed-Specific Le1 Lectin and the Vegetative Le3 Lectin Genes. Plant Mol Biol Rep 33, 1779–1789 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11105-015-0873-y

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