BMC Plant Biology (Apr 2024)

Genome-wide characterization of DNA methyltransferase family genes implies GhDMT6 improving tolerance of salt and drought on cotton

  • Xiaomin Yang,
  • Zhigang Bai,
  • Yunxin He,
  • Ning Wang,
  • Liangqing Sun,
  • Yongqi Li,
  • Zujun Yin,
  • Xiaoge Wang,
  • Binglei Zhang,
  • Mingge Han,
  • Xuke Lu,
  • Xiugui Chen,
  • Delong Wang,
  • Junjuan Wang,
  • Shuai Wang,
  • Lixue Guo,
  • Chao Chen,
  • Keyun Feng,
  • Wuwei Ye

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-024-04985-x
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 24, no. 1
pp. 1 – 16

Abstract

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Abstract Background DNA methylation is an important epigenetic mode of genomic DNA modification and plays a vital role in maintaining epigenetic content and regulating gene expression. Cytosine-5 DNA methyltransferase (C5-MTase) are the key enzymes in the process of DNA methylation. However, there is no systematic analysis of the C5-MTase in cotton so far, and the function of DNMT2 genes has not been studied. Methods In this study, the whole genome of cotton C5-MTase coding genes was identified and analyzed using a bioinformatics method based on information from the cotton genome, and the function of GhDMT6 was further validated by VIGS experiments and subcellular localization analysis. Results 33 C5-MTases were identified from three cotton genomes, and were divided into four subfamilies by systematic evolutionary analysis. After the protein domain alignment of C5-MTases in cotton, 6 highly conserved motifs were found in the C-terminus of 33 proteins involved in methylation modification, which indicated that C5-MTases had a basic catalytic methylation function. These proteins were divided into four classes based on the N-terminal difference, of which DNMT2 lacks the N-terminal regulatory domain. The expression of C5-MTases in different parts of cotton was different under different stress treatments, which indicated the functional diversity of cotton C5-MTase gene family. Among the C5-MTases, the GhDMT6 had a obvious up-regulated expression. After silencing GhDMT6 with VIGS, the phenotype of cotton seedlings under different stress treatments showed a significant difference. Compared with cotton seedlings that did not silence GhDMT6, cotton seedlings silencing GhDMT6 showed significant stress resistance. Conclusion The results show that C5-MTases plays an important role in cotton stress response, which is beneficial to further explore the function of DNMT2 subfamily genes.

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