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. 2020 Jan;225(1):511-529.
doi: 10.1111/nph.16122. Epub 2019 Oct 1.

Genome-wide analysis of MIKC-type MADS-box genes in wheat: pervasive duplications, functional conservation and putative neofunctionalization

Susanne Schilling  1 , Alice Kennedy  1 , Sirui Pan  1 , Lars S Jermiin  1   2 , Rainer Melzer  1
Affiliations
Free article

Genome-wide analysis of MIKC-type MADS-box genes in wheat: pervasive duplications, functional conservation and putative neofunctionalization

Susanne Schilling et al. New Phytol. 2020 Jan.
Free article

Abstract

Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is one of the most important crops worldwide. Given a growing global population coupled with increasingly challenging cultivation conditions, facilitating wheat breeding by fine-tuning important traits is of great importance. MADS-box genes are prime candidates for this, as they are involved in virtually all aspects of plant development. Here, we present a detailed overview of phylogeny and expression of 201 wheat MIKC-type MADS-box genes. Homoeolog retention is significantly above the average genome-wide retention rate for wheat genes, indicating that many MIKC-type homoeologs are functionally important and not redundant. Gene expression is generally in agreement with the expected subfamily-specific expression pattern, indicating broad conservation of function of MIKC-type genes during wheat evolution. We also found extensive expansion of some MIKC-type subfamilies, especially those potentially involved in adaptation to different environmental conditions like flowering time genes. Duplications are especially prominent in distal telomeric regions. A number of MIKC-type genes show novel expression patterns and respond, for example, to biotic stress, pointing towards neofunctionalization. We speculate that conserved, duplicated and neofunctionalized MIKC-type genes may have played an important role in the adaptation of wheat to a diversity of conditions, hence contributing to the importance of wheat as a global staple food.

Keywords: Triticum aestivum; MADS-box genes; adaptation; crop breeding; gene duplication; neofunctionalization; transcription factors; wheat.

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