Abstract
Heavy metal toxicity severely affects plant growth, development, and productivity. The mitigating effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi on heavy metal stress in plants have been widely investigated, but research on metal tolerance proteins (MTPs) associated with AM fungi in legumes is still lacking. In this study, bioinformatics methods were used to identify and characterize 50 MTP genes in Glycine max, Medicago truncatula, and Lotus japonicus. All of these MTPs contain a cationic diffusion enhancer (CDF) domain, and more than half of the members have a zinc transporter dimerization domain. The phylogenetic analysis divided these MTPs into three groups: Zn-CDF group, Fe/Zn-CDF group, and Mn-CDF group. Sequence alignment showed that each group of MTP sequences has high homology. Tissue expression analysis showed that most MTPs were expressed in all tested tissues, while some MTPs were expressed preferentially in roots. The predicted promoter regions of MTP genes contained a variety of cis-regulatory elements, and 34 of them contained mycorrhizal response CTTC-element. Further mycorrhizal-induced expression analysis indicated several MtMTPs and LjMTPs responded to mycorrhizal symbiosis. A further prediction of miRNAs for MTPs indicated that several miRNAs are involved in symbiotic regulation. In conclusion, this study identified and characterized MTP genes in legumes, and indicated that mycorrhizal symbiosis may be involved in the regulation of MTPs.
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This work was supported by Yunnan Fundamental Research Projects (Grant no. 202101AU070139).
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Xu, Y., Cheng, L., Chen, J. et al. Genome-wide investigation on metal tolerance protein (MTP) genes in leguminous plants: Glycine max, Medicago truncatula, and Lotus japonicus. Acta Physiol Plant 45, 18 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-022-03497-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-022-03497-1