Genome-wide identification, expression profiles and regulatory network of MAPK cascade gene family in barley
Abstract Background Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade is a conserved and universal signal transduction module in organism. Although it has been well characterized in many plants, no systematic analysis has been conducted in the model cereal crop barley. Results Here, we identified 20 MAPKs, 6 MAPKKs and 156 MAPKKKs through a genome-wide search method using the latest published barley genomic data. Phylogenetic analysis assigned all the MAPK cascade genes into three groups in accordance to MAPK, MAPKK and MAPKKK family. Gene duplication revealed that segmental and tandem duplication events contributed to the expansion of barley MAPK cascade genes and the duplicated gene pairs were found to undergone strong purifying selection. Expression profiles of the HvMAPK, HvMAPKK and HvMAPKKKs were then investigated in different organs and under diverse stresses using the available 132 RNA-seq datasets, and then the tissue-specific and stress-responsive ones were found. Finally, co-expression regulatory network of MAPK cascade genes was constructed by WGCNA tool, resulting in a complicated network composed of a total of 72 branches containing 46 HvMAPK cascade genes and 46 miRNAs. Conclusion This study provides the candidates for further functional studies and also contribute to better understand the MAPK cascade regulatory network in barley and beyond.