The Mulberry Gene Family and the Response of to Silkworm Herbivory through Activating the Transcription of in the Catechin Biosynthesis Pathway.

() genes, as unique plant transcription factors, play important roles in plant developmental regulation and stress response adaptation. Although mulberry is a commercially valuable tree species, there have been few systematic studies on genes. In this work, we identified 15 full-length genes in the mulberry genome, which were distributed on 4 chromosomes. Phylogenetic analysis clustered the genes from five plants (, , , , and ) into five groups. Two zinc fingers (Zn1 and Zn2) were found in the conserved SBP domain in all of the s. Comparative analyses of gene structures and conserved motifs revealed the conservation of within a group, whereas there were significant structure differences among groups. Gene quantitative analysis showed that the expression of had tissue specificity, and had much higher expression levels in older mulberry leaves. Furthermore, transcriptome data showed that the expression levels of and were significantly increased under silkworm herbivory. Molecular experiments revealed that responded to herbivory treatment through promoting the transcription of and further upregulating the expression levels of catechin synthesis genes (, , and ).