SUPEROXIDE DISMUTASE FAMILY GENES IN WATERMELON AND THEIR RESPONSES TO DIFFERENT ABIOTIC STRESSES

Highlights

• A total of 8 SOD genes from watermelon were identified and bioinformatically analyzed.

• The SOD proteins from watermelon and other different plant species can be classified into five groups consistent with their metal cofactors.

• ClSOD genes exhibited distinctive tissue-specific and abiotic stress responsive expression patterns.

Abstract

Superoxide dismutase (SOD) is an important enzyme in the antioxidant system of plants and plays a vital role in stress responses by maintaining the dynamic balance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) concentrations. Genome-wide analysis of the SOD gene family in various plant species has been conducted but little is known about this gene family in watermelon (Citrullus lanatus). Here, eight SOD genes were identified in the watermelon genome and are designated ClCSD1-5, ClFSD1-2 and ClMSD according to their metal cofactors. Phylogenetic analysis shows that SOD proteins from various plant species can be classified into five groups and members in the same group possess the same metal cofactor and similar subcellular localizations. Expression analysis of the ClSOD genes indicates that they had tissue-specific expression patterns with high expression in different tissues including the leaves, flowers and fruit. In addition, the expression of ClSOD genes differed appreciably under salinity, drought and abscisic acid (ABA) treatments, indicating that they may be involved in ROS scavenging under different abiotic stresses via an ABA-dependent signaling pathway. These results lay the foundation for elucidating the function of ClSOD genes in stress tolerance and fruit development in watermelon.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

abiotic stress / expression analysis / phylogeny / SOD / superoxide dismutase / watermelon

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Supplementary materials

The online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2020350 contains supplementary materials (Tables S1–S4).

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Planned Project of Major Scientific and Technological Innovation Platform in Jiangxi Province (No. 2018BCD41002).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Yong Zhou, Linjuan Ouyang, Dahu Zhou, Yicong Cai, and Haohua He declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2020. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)