Genome-wide identification of bHLH transcription factors and expression analysis under drought stress in at germination.

Unlabelled: The basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor family is the second largest in plants. bHLH transcription factor is not only universally involved in plant growth and metabolism, including photomorphogenesis, light signal transduction, and secondary metabolism, but also plays an important role in plant response to stress. However, the function of bHLH TFs in species has not been studied yet. (Nevski) Á. Löve is a perennial genus of the . species are mostly distributed in arid/semi-arid areas and they show good drought tolerance. In this study, we identified 152 PlbHLH TFs in , which could be classified into 15 groups. Collinearity analysis indicates that 122 genes share homology with genes in wheat, and it has lower homology with genes in . Based on transcriptome profiling under an experiment with three PEG concentrations (0%, 10%, and 20%), 10 up-regulated genes and 11 down-regulated genes were screened. Among them, , and as candidate genes may be the key genes related to drought tolerance response at germination, and they have been demonstrated to respond to drought, salt, oxidative, heat, and heavy metal stress in yeast. This study lays the foundation for an in-depth study of the biological roles of in , and discovered new drought-tolerance candidate genes to enhance the genetic background of crops.

Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-024-01433-w.