Exploring conservation of cellular-level traits in shade avoidance syndrome among species 5 189 5.2.6 The similarity among TFs is linked to similarity in their expression The exploration of conservation of TF gene expression patterns in Solanaceae not only highlights distinctive traits in these transcription factors but also prompts questions about their functions and evolutionary dynamics compared to counterparts in other plants. Investigating if the function of these TFs is conserved between the dicot families opens avenues to uncover nuanced aspects of TF evolution and gene regulation. To grasp conservation of TF molecular structure, we employed mVISTA to identify conserved sequences in lengthy alignments (Frazer et al., 2004). We used Muscle (Edgar, 2004) to align the transcription factor (TF) homologs. The resulting alignments are visually represented by mVista (Mayor et al., 2000) in Figures 5.13-15, with a red color to denote regions of conservation compared to the tomato gene. Unsurprisingly, the tomato genes are mostly conserved in other Solanaceae, but interestingly, the conservation is quite restricted outside the family. The similarity in TF sequences among tomato, eggplant, and pepper extends beyond the Solanaceae family (Figures 5.13-5.15). In pepper, there are two homologs of Solyc01g090760: pepper1 homolog has very low conservation (~76% of 169bp, Figure 5.14), but its expression pattern is similar to the tomato homolog (Figure 5.11), while pepper2 homolog has high similarity (86% of 703 bp) and non-conserved response to FR. This could be a showcase of functional divergence and co-option of homologs. This insight into the conservation patterns of TFs within S. lycopersicum not only sheds light on the unique characteristics of these particular transcription factors but also raises questions about their functional roles and evolutionary dynamics in comparison to their counterparts in other plant species: Has the evolutionary path in Solanaceae driven both the FR-responsive expression and the SAS function of these TFs? Further exploration of these patterns would have potential to unravel nuanced aspects of TF evolution and gene regulation.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw