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Functional Plant Biology Functional Plant Biology Society
Plant function and evolutionary biology
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Isolation and characterisation of six putative wheat cell wall-associated kinases

Yong Liu A B D , Dongcheng Liu A , Haiying Zhang A B , Hongbo Gao C , Xiaoli Guo C , Xiangdong Fu A and Aimin Zhang A E
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A State Key Laboratory of Plant Cell and Chromosome Engineering, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.

B Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.

C China Agricultural University, Beijing 100094, China.

D Current address: Department of Physiology, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8701 Watertown Plank Road, Milwaukee, WI 53226, USA.

E Corresponding author. Email: amzhang@genetics.ac.cn

Functional Plant Biology 33(9) 811-821 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP06041
Submitted: 27 February 2006  Accepted: 19 May 2006   Published: 1 September 2006

Abstract

The plant cell wall-associated kinase (WAK) and WAK-like kinase (WAKL) make up a unique group in the receptor-like protein kinase (RLK) superfamily. Previous studies on Arabidopsis have revealed that the WAK gene family members play an important role in both cell elongation and stress response signalling. Here we show that four putative WAKs (TaWAK1, TaWAKL2, TaWAKL3, and TaWAK4) and two WAKLs (TaWAKL1 and TaWAKL2) were isolated from wheat based on the DNA sequence similarity and the protein structure conservation of Arabidopsis WAKs genes. TaWAK1, TaWAK2, TaWAK3 and TaWAKL1 each encode a putative intact protein with the characteristic of the WAK / WAKL gene family members, except for the abbreviated TaWAK4 and TaWAKL2 which were caused by nucleotide mutation and alternative splicing, respectively. Southern analysis revealed that TaWAKL1, TaWAK1, TaWAK2 and TaWAK3 are all multiple-copy members. Real-time PCR analysis revealed that the TaWAK1 and TaWAK3 displayed similar expression patterns, while expressions of TaWAKL1, TaWAKL2, and TaWAK2 were organ specific. Further, we analysed the conservation of introns and intron–exon structure and the putative protein structures between wheat and Arabidopsis, which showed the putative wheat WAKs are different from those of Arabidopsis and make up a new subgroup in the polygenetic tree.

Keywords: cell wall-associated kinase, gene, WAK, wheat.


Acknowledgments

We thank SW Wang (Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences) for providing the dwarf wheat line Ning 982105. We also thank Douglas D Archbold (University of Kentucky) and Jennifer L Pietruze (Medical College of Wisconsin) for critical review of the manuscript. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30521001, 30025031) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences program (KSCX2-SW-304) with grants to A Zhang.


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