Cloning, localization and phylogenetic analysis of barley putative APETALA 2/ethylene responsive element binding protein (AP2/EREBP) genes

Abstract

Eight putative barley AP2/EREBP genes were cloned based on the barley HarvEST database. The introns in the translated regions of these genes were all located at the front of the conserved AP2 domain. Among the eight genes, DNA sequences of hv.18885 and hv.17070 were the same between Steptoe and Morex. Of the other six genes, there was very high ratio of ‘G’ and ‘C’ bases in the variant DNA sequence regions of three genes between Steptoe and Morex. Thus, only three genes were successfully located on the chromosomes. hv.8737 and hv.15732 were mapped to the short arm of chromosome 7H and hv.2871 to a major quantitative trait loci (QTL) region conferring adult spot blotch tolerance on the short arm of chromosomes 3H. Phylogenetic analysis showed that putative plant AP2/EREBP genes in the AP2 subfamily were completely separated from those in other subfamilies. The putative AP2/EREBP genes in RAV and Soloist subfamilies were clustered together, while those in the ERF and CRT/DRE subfamily were clustered together. Among the main branch-groups of each subfamily in plant, those from wheat, barley and rice had the tendency to cluster together when compared with those from Arabidopsis.

Key words: AP2/EREBP, clone, map, phylogenetic, barley.