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Association of jacalin-related lectins with wheat responses to stresses revealed by transcriptional profiling

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Abstract

Jacalin-related lectins (JRLs) are carbohydrate-binding proteins widely present in plants and have one or more jacalin domains in common. However, JRLs’ structural types and functions are still poorly understood. In the present study, a total of 67 wheat (Triticum aestivum) JRL genes were identified through an exhausted search of EST database coupling with genome walking using published 454 sequence reads of Chinese Spring. A comparison of the translated wheat JRL proteins with those from other plants showed plant JRLs generally had low sequence similarity within and between species but exhibited conserved modular domain structures. More JRL genes encoded multiple jacalin domains in Arabidopsis thaliana, whereas more genes encoded chimeric JRLs in cereal plants. Dirigent domain-containing JRL genes were Poaceae-specific and accounted for nearly half of the identified wheat JRL genes. The dirigent domains were evolutionarily significantly correlated with the covalently linked jacalin domains. A phylogenetic analysis showed JRL proteins have experienced a substantial diversification after speciation. Moreover, new structural features conserved across the taxa were identified. Digital expression analysis and RT-PCR assays showed the expression of wheat JRL genes was largely tissue specific, typically low, and mostly inducible by biotic and abiotic stresses and stress hormones. These results suggest plant JRLs are critical for plant adaptation to stressful environments.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by NSFC program (30130054, 30025030), ‘973’ program (2010CB125900), Fundamental research Funds for the Central Universities (KYZ201202-4), and 111 project of Ministry of Education (grant no. Bo8025). Xiang Yang was partially supported by a fund from Engineering Technology Research Center of Guizhou Province (No. 20124006). The authors are grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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  1. Yang Xiang

    Present address: Guizhou Rapeseed Institute, Guizhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 270-0061, Baiyun Road, Guiyang, 550008, People’s Republic of China

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Crop Genomics and Bioinformatics Center and National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210095, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

    Min Song, Wenqi Xu, Yang Xiang, Haiyan Jia, Lixia Zhang & Zhengqiang Ma

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Correspondence to Zhengqiang Ma.

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Min Song and Wenqi Xu contributed equally to this paper.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Online Resource 1. Primer sequences used in RT-PCR (DOC 56 kb)

Online Resource 2. JRL genes in the wheat genome (PDF 115 kb)

Online Resource 3. The translated sequences of wheat JRL genes (PDF 96 kb)

11103_2013_121_MOESM4_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 4. JRL genes and JRL structural domains of sorghum, rice, maize, B. distachyon, and A. thaliana (PDF 120 kb)

Online Resource 5. Sequence alignment of jacalin domains identified in wheat (a) and A. thaliana (b) (PDF 1785 kb)

11103_2013_121_MOESM6_ESM.pdf

Online Resource 6. Expression profiles of a selected set of TaJRL genes in Wangshuibai, as revealed by sqPCR (PDF 194 kb)

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Song, M., Xu, W., Xiang, Y. et al. Association of jacalin-related lectins with wheat responses to stresses revealed by transcriptional profiling. Plant Mol Biol 84, 95–110 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-013-0121-5

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