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Functional Divergence of the Glutamine Phosphoribosyl Pyrophosphate Amidotransferase (ASE) Gene Family in Arabidopsis

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Abstract

Background: Functional divergence occurs widely among duplicated genes in plants. The divergence of functional genes may result from changes in gene regulation or protein-coding regions, or both. These changes contributing to the functional divergence of plants require further elucidation. Glutamine phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate amidotransferase (ASE) is a key enzyme in de novo purine biosynthesis and plays important roles in plant growth and development.

Results: In our research, three ASE genes were identified in the Arabidopsis thaliana genome, and they were designated AtASE1, AtASE2 and AtASE3. Gene expression profiles revealed that the three genes exhibit very different expression, and gene regulation plays a pivotal role in the divergence of the ASE gene family. Subcellular localization analysis indicated that the three proteins were all localized in chloroplasts. Protein biochemical analysis revealed that the catalytic abilities of ASE proteins show differentiation, but further transgenic overexpression experiments proved that this was not the main reason for physiological functional divergence.

Conclusions: Our results indicate that the functional divergence of the ASE gene family members might result from changes in their promoters, but not protein-coding region.

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Abbreviations

ASE:

glutamine phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate amidotransferase

GST:

glutathione S-transferase

PRA:

5-phosphoribosyl-(β) 1-amine

PRPP:

phosporibosyl pyrophosphate

PRX:

class III peroxidase

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Funding

This study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, (Grant No. 31400574), and High-Level Talent Research Program of Inner Mongolia University (21400-5175163). The funding bodies were not involved in the design of the study, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data or writing of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Herbage and Endemic Crop Biology, Ministry of Education, School of Life Sciences, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010020, China

    Hai-Jing Liu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China

    Hai-Jing Liu, Zhi-Ling Yang, Xin Wang & Ting-Ting Qian

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

    Hai-Jing Liu, Zhi-Ling Yang, Xin Wang & Ting-Ting Qian

  4. College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming 650201, China

    Lin-Ling Ren

  5. Novogene Bioinformatics Institute, Beijing 100015, China

    Yi-Ming Wang

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  1. Hai-Jing Liu
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Contributions

QTT and YZL designed the research. QTT performed the experiments. LHJ, WX, WYM and QTT analyzed the data and prepared the figures. LHJ and QTT wrote the paper. YZL and RLL commented on the paper. QTT led the whole project. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Hai-Jing Liu or Ting-Ting Qian.

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Liu, HJ., Yang, ZL., Ren, LL. et al. Functional Divergence of the Glutamine Phosphoribosyl Pyrophosphate Amidotransferase (ASE) Gene Family in Arabidopsis. J Evol Biochem Phys 57, 1310–1321 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0022093021060119

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