BAHD superfamily of acyl-CoA dependent acyltransferases in Populus and Arabidopsis: bioinformatics and gene expression

• DOI: 10.1007/s11103-009-9482-1
• Publication Date: 2009-04-02T04:48:00Z
• Authors: Xiao-Hong Yu; Jin-Ying Gou; Chang-Jun Liu
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; Molecular Sequence Data; Arabidopsis; Chromosome Mapping; Chromosomes, Plant; Gene Expression Regulation, Enzymologic; 03 medical and health sciences; Populus; Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; Multigene Family; Acyl Coenzyme A; Amino Acid Sequence; Databases, Nucleic Acid; Acyltransferases; Phylogeny; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; Plant Proteins

Plant acyl-CoA dependent acyltransferases constitute a large specific protein superfamily, named BAHD. Using the conserved sequence motifs of BAHD members, we searched the genome sequences of Populus and Arabidopsis, and identified, respectively, 94- and 61-putative genes. Subsequently, we analyzed the phylogeny, gene structure, and chromosomal distribution of BAHD members of both species; then, we profiled expression patterns of BAHD genes by "in silico" northern- and microarray-analyses based on public databases, and by RT-PCR. While our genomic- and bioinformatic- analyses provided full sets of BAHD superfamily genes, and cleaned up a few existing annotation errors, importantly it led to our recognizing several unique Arabidopsis BAHD genes that inversely overlapped with their neighboring genes on the genome, and disclosing a potential natural anti-sense regulation for gene expressions. Systemic gene-expression profiling of BAHD members revealed distinct tissue-specific/preferential expression patterns, indicating their diverse biological functions. Our study affords a strong knowledge base for understanding BAHD members' evolutionary relationships and gene functions implicated in plant growth, development and metabolism.