ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1629604
The WD40 gene family in recretohalophyte Limonium bicolor: genomic identification and functional analysis in salt gland development and salinity tolerance
Provisionally accepted
- Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
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Developing salt-tolerant plants would enable the agricultural use of saline soil. Sea lavender (Limonium bicolor), a typical recretohalophyte with salt glands in its epidermis, contains abundant genetic resources for gene mining and for transferring salt tolerance to non-halophytes and crops. The WD40 gene family is one of the largest gene families in eukaryotic genomes, and its members encode proteins involved in protein-protein interactions with roles in plant growth, development, and response to abiotic stress. However, the characteristics of the WD40 gene family in L.bicolor are largely unknown. Here, we systematically identified the 367 members of the WD40 gene family in L. bicolor, which are distributed across all eight chromosomes and define six major subfamilies. We report their characteristics, phylogenetic relationships, predicted subcellular localization, the complement of cisregulatory elements in their promoters, the expression patterns of their encoding genes, and their putative roles in salt gland development or salt tolerance. Lb1G05968 and Lb3G17197, two members from subfamily 6 (the largest subfamily) were located in the cytoplasm and participate in salt gland development and salt tolerance, as evidenced by their virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS), suggesting that WD40 proteins contribute to the development of epidermal structures and stress responses.This study lays a foundation for a comprehensive understanding of the WD40 family and for further research on their potential function in the growth and development of L. bicolor.
Keywords: Feature description, Limonium bicolor, Subcellular localization, salt gland development, salt tolerance, WD40 gene family
Received: 16 May 2025; Accepted: 16 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sun, Mu, Tan, Wang, Wang and Yuan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Xi Wang, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
Fang Yuan, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
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