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Genome-wide identification and expression profiling of chitinase genes in tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) under biotic stress conditions

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Abstract

Chitinases are a diverse group of enzymes having the ability to degrade chitin. Chitin is the second most abundant polysaccharide on earth, predominantly found in insect exoskeletons and fungal cell walls. In this study, we performed a genome-wide search for chitinase genes and identified a total of 49 chitinases in tea. These genes were categorized into 5 classes, where an expansion of class V chitinases has been observed in comparison to other plant species. Extensive loss of introns in 46% of the GH18 chitinases indicates that an evolutionary pressure is acting upon these genes to lose introns for rapid gene expression. The promoter upstream regions in 65% of the predicted chitinases contain methyl-jasmonate, salicylic acid and defense responsive cis-acting elements, which may further illustrate the possible role of chitinases in tea plant’s defense against various pests and pathogens. Differential expression analysis revealed that transcripts of two GH19 chitinases TEA028279 and TEA019397 got upregulated during three different fungal infections in tea. While GH19 chitinase TEA031377 showed an increase in transcript abundance in the two insect infested tea tissues. Semi-quantitative RT-PCR analysis revealed that five GH19 chitinases viz. TEA018892, TEA031484, TEA28279, TEA033470 and TEA031277 showed significant increase in expression in the tea plants challenged with a biotrophic pathogen Exobasidium vexans. The study endeavours in highlighting biotic stress responsive defensive role of chitinase genes in tea.

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Data availability

All the SRA data samples were downloaded from NCBI SRA database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/). The chitinase gene sequences of tea were downloaded from Tea Plant Information Archive (TPIA) database (http://tpia.teaplant.org/). The chitinase protein sequences of Arabidopsis were downloaded from The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR) (https://www.arabidopsis.org/).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Biswajit Bera, Director (Research), Tea Board of India for the valuable suggestions to conduct this study. We are thankful to DTRDC, Kurseong authority for providing tea saplings to conduct the experiments. We are thankful to DST, Govt. of India for providing DST-FIST support to the Department of Botany, Gauhati University, where this research work was carried out.

Funding

The research work was funded by ECR award granted to Niraj Agarwala by Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Govt. of India (ECR 000710/2017). This research work was partially supported by The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and DST (Department of Science and Technology).

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  1. Department of Botany, Gauhati University, Jalukbari, Guwahati, Assam, 781014, India

    Kuntala Sarma Bordoloi, Debasish B. Krishnatreya, Pooja Moni Baruah & Niraj Agarwala

  2. Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Tezpur University, Napaam, Sonitpur, Assam, 784028, India

    Anuj Kumar Borah

  3. ICAR-National Institute for Plant Biotechnology, LBS Building, Pusa, IARI, New Delhi, 110012, India

    Tapan Kumar Mondal

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  1. Kuntala Sarma Bordoloi
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Bordoloi, K.S., Krishnatreya, D.B., Baruah, P.M. et al. Genome-wide identification and expression profiling of chitinase genes in tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) under biotic stress conditions. Physiol Mol Biol Plants 27, 369–385 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12298-021-00947-x

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