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Genome-wide identification, expression profiling, and protein-protein interaction properties of ovate family proteins in apple

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Abstract

As plant-specific transcription factors, ovate family proteins (OFP) were involved in the regulation of plant growth, development, and stress response. Although OFP proteins have been reported in some species, little is known about their evolution, structure, expression levels under biological and abiotic stress, and interactions among OFP members in apple. In this study, 26 apple MdOFP genes were identified. Gene structure analysis showed that the main characteristics of the OFP genes of monocots and dicots were intron-free. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the OFP proteins of monocots and dicots could be divided into 15 subgroups, of which Ia, Ib, Ic, Id, Ie, If, Ig, Ih, Ii, and Ij subgroups were dicots, while IIa, IIb, IIc, IId, and IIe subgroups were monocots. Chromosomal localization analysis showed that 26 MdOFP genes were unevenly distributed on 13 chromosomes. Twelve MdOFP genes were cloned by RT-PCR method and found to be expressed in the tested tissues in different degrees. Under osmotic stress treatment, MdOFP11, MdOFP14, and MdOFP20 responded to NaCl treatment; MdOFP6 and MdOFP14 responded to mannitol treatment. The results of Y2H showed that MdOFP13, MdOFP16, MdOFP20, and MdOFP22 could form heterodimers with multiple MdOFP proteins, while MdOFP16 and MdOFP16 could form homodimers. These results provide valuable references for analyzing the biological function of MdOFP transcription factors in the growth, development, and stress conditions.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Professor Thomas Alan Gavin, Cornell University, and XuYi for their help in revising our English composition.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31501742), Shandong Agricultural Good Cultivar Project (Grant No. 2016LZGC034), and Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Project of SAAS (CXGC2016A03 and CXGC2018F03).

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Author notes

  1. Huifeng Li and Qinglong Dong contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shandong Institute of Pomology, No. 64 Longtan Road, Tai’an, 271000, Shandong, China

    Huifeng Li & Kun Ran

  2. State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology for Arid Areas, College of Horticulture, Northwest A and F University, No. 3 Taicheng Road, Yangling, 712100, Shaanxi, China

    Qinglong Dong

  3. College of Horticulture Science and Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, No. 61 Daizong Road, Tai’an, 271000, Shandong, China

    Qiang Zhao

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  1. Huifeng Li
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  2. Qinglong Dong
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Contributions

HL and KR collected the public dataset, performed bioinformatics analysis, and drafted the manuscript. QD contributed to the bioinformatics analysis and preparation of all figures and tables. QZ conducted the experiments. HL and KR conceived this study and reviewed the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Huifeng Li or Kun Ran.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interests.

Data archiving statement

All cloned OFP gene sequences of Malus domestica were deposited into the NCBI database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/). The accession numbers were listed in Table 1. Details of the cloned OFP gene sequences were listed in supplementary data file 2.

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Communicated by M. Troggio

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Li, H., Dong, Q., Zhao, Q. et al. Genome-wide identification, expression profiling, and protein-protein interaction properties of ovate family proteins in apple. Tree Genetics & Genomes 15, 45 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-019-1354-5

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