Identification of Light-Harvesting Chlorophyll a/b-Binding Protein Genes of Zostera marina L. and Their Expression Under Different Environmental Conditions

• Published in: Journal of Ocean University of China 2016-02, Vol.15 (1), p.152-162
• Main Authors: Kong, Fanna, Zhou, Yang, Sun, Peipei, Cao, Min, Li, Hong, Mao, Yunxiang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acidity; Algae; Amino acids; Binding sites; Chlorophyll; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Environmental conditions; Gene expression; Inorganic carbon; Light intensity; Light quality; Marine; Marine environment; Meteorology; Oceanography; Photosynthesis; Proteins; Solar energy; Topology; Zostera marina; 叶绿素a; 基因家族; 大叶藻; 系统进化树; 蛋白基因; 表达序列标签; 鉴定; 陆地环境
• ISSN: 1672-5182; 1993-5021; 1672-5174
• DOI: 10.1007/s11802-016-2688-3

Photosynthesis includes the collection of light and a/b-binding （LHC） proteins. In high plants, the LHC gene family constituting the light-harvesting complex ofphotosystems I and II. the transfer of solar energy using light-harvesting chlorophyll includes LHCA and LHCB sub-families, which encode proteins Zostera marina L. is a monocotyledonous angiosperm and inhab- its submerged marine environments rather than land environments. We characterized the Lhca and Lhcb gene families of Z. marina from the expressed sequence tags （EST） database. In total, 13 unigenes were annotated as ZmLhc, 6 in Lhca family and 7 in ZmLhcb family. ZmLHCA and ZmLHCB contained the conservative LHC motifs and amino acid residues binding chlorophyll. The average similarity among mature ZmLHCA and ZmLHCB was 48.91% and 48.66%, respectively, which indicated a high degree of diver- gence within ZmLHChc gene family. The reconstructed phylogenetic tree showed that the tree topology and phylogenetic relation- ship were similar to those reported in other high plants, suggesting that the Lhc genes were highly conservative and the classification of ZmLhc genes was consistent with the evolutionary position of Z. marina. Real-time reverse transcription （RT） PCR analysis showed that different members of ZmLhca and ZmLhcb responded to a stress in different expression patterns. Salinity, temperature, light intensity and light quality may affect the expression of most ZmLhca and ZmLhcb genes. Inorganic carbon concentration and acidity had no obvious effect on ZmLhca and ZmLhcb gene expression, except for ZmLhca6.