Genome-wide identification of bHLH transcription factors and expression analysis under drought stress in Pseudoroegneria libanotica at germination

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12298-024-01433-w

Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants，09 March 2024

Xingguan Zhai,Xia Wang,Xunzhe Yang,Qingxiang Huang,Dandan Wu,Yi Wang,Houyang Kang,Lina Sha,Xing Fan,Yonghong Zhou&Haiqin Zhang

Abstract

The basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor family is the second largest in plants. bHLH transcription factor is not only universally involved in plant growth and metabolism, including photomorphogenesis, light signal transduction, and secondary metabolism, but also plays an important role in plant response to stress. However, the function of bHLH TFs inPseudoroegneriaspecies has not been studied yet.Pseudoroegneria(Nevski) Á. Löve is a perennial genus of theTriticeae.Pseudoroegneriaspecies are mostly distributed in arid/semi-arid areas and they show good drought tolerance. In this study, we identified 152 PlbHLH TFs inPseudoroegneria libanotica, which could be classified into 15 groups. Collinearity analysis indicates that 122PlbHLHgenes share homology withwbHLHgenes in wheat, and it has lower homology withAtbHLHgenes inArabidopsis. Based on transcriptome profiling under an experiment with three PEG concentrations (0%, 10%, and 20%), 10 up-regulated genes and 11 down-regulatedPlbHLHgenes were screened. Among them,PlbHLH6,PlbHLH55andPlbHLH64as candidate genes may be the key genes related to drought tolerance response at germination, and they have been demonstrated to respond to drought, salt, oxidative, heat, and heavy metal stress in yeast. This study lays the foundation for an in-depth study of the biological roles ofPlbHLHsinPse. libanotica, and discovered new drought-tolerance candidate genes to enhance the genetic background ofTriticeaecrops.