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JXB Advance Access originally published online on October 1, 2008
Journal of Experimental Botany 2008 59(15):4095-4107; doi:10.1093/jxb/ern248
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© 2008 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper is available online free of all access charges (see http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/open_access.html for further details)

RESEARCH PAPER

Phylogeny, gene structures, and expression patterns of the ERF gene family in soybean (Glycine max L.)

Gaiyun Zhang1,2 *, Ming Chen2 *, Xueping Chen1,{dagger}, Zhaoshi Xu2, Shan Guan2, Lian-Cheng Li2, Aili Li2, Jiaming Guo1, Long Mao2 and Youzhi Ma2,{dagger}

1Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
2The National Key Facility for Crop Genetic Resources and Genetic Improvement, Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mayzh{at}mail.caas.net.cn

Members of the ERF transcription factor family play important roles in regulating gene expression in response to biotic and abiotic stresses. In soybean (Glycine max L.), however, only a few ERF genes have been studied so far. In this study, 98 unigenes that contained a complete AP2/ERF domain were identified from 63 676 unique sequences in the DFCI Soybean Gene Index database. The phylogeny, gene structures, and putative conserved motifs in soybean ERF proteins were analysed, and compared with those of Arabidopsis and rice. The members of the soybean ERF family were divided into 12 subgroups, similar to the case for Arabidopsis. AP2/ERF domains were conserved among soybean, Arabidopsis, and rice. Outside the AP2/ERF domain, many soybean-specific conserved motifs were detected. Expression analysis showed that nine unigenes belonging to six ERF family subgroups were induced by both biotic/abiotic stresses and hormone treatment, suggesting that they were involved in cross-talk between biotic and abiotic stress-responsive signalling pathways. Overexpression of two full-length genes from two different subgroups enhanced the tolerances to drought, salt stresses, and/or pathogen infection of the tobacco plants. These results will be useful for elucidating ERF gene-associated stress response signalling pathways in soybean.

Key words: ERF family, gene function, phylogeny, soybean, stress response

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

Received 15 May 2008; Revised 7 September 2008 Accepted 11 September 2008


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