Differential expression patterns within the grapevine stilbene synthase gene family revealed through their regulatory regions

CHIALVA, CONSTANZA; CLAUDIO MUÑOZ; MARÍA MICCONO; ESTEFANIA EICHLER; LUCIANO CALDERÓN; PRIETO, HUMBERTO; DIEGO LIJAVETZKY

BORDEAUX

Conferencia; XII International Conference on GRAPEVINE BREEDING and GENETICS; 2018

INRA

The analyses of the grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) genome have revealed an unusually large andclosely related stilbene synthase (VvSTS) gene family. Interestingly, despite the high sequencesimilarity among those genes, several studies have observed clear differences between theirexpression patterns. Here, we studied the transcriptional responses to different elicitors of severalVvSTSs in cellular suspension cultures. Primarily, we performed the in silico analysis of the VvSTSregulatory sequences and found the presence of several putative cis-regulatory elements. Then,we evaluated the effect of three treatments?naphtalene acetic acid, methyl jasmonate (MeJA),and ethylene?over the gene expression and found that the genes follow expression patternsprobably specific to their sequences. According to this, we focused our study on their regulatoryregions and adopted a novel and efficient transient expression assay to determine the activity ofthese promoters. The results demonstrated that variation in gene expression could be assessedthrough the analysis of VvSTS regulatory sequences under the effect of different stimuli such asMeJA and cyclodextrins. Furthermore, taking advantage of the lower sequence identity at thepromoter level, this strategy accomplished a more accurate alternative to differentiate themembers of a large multi-gene family such as STS. This work is expected to provide evidence ofthe specific expression functions of VvSTS promoters and may benefit future research inunderstanding the regulation of gene expression.