Genome-Wide Identification of the WRKY Gene Family in Mulberry and Screening of Consistently Drought-Responsive Candidates.
- 1College of Biology and Food Engineering, Qujing Normal University, Qujing 655011, China.
Abstract
Background
WRKY transcription factors are widely involved in plant responses to drought. Mulberry (Morus alba) is an economically important tree in Southwest China, yet its WRKY gene family has not been systematically characterized at the genome level.Methods
In this study, we identified the WRKY gene family in mulberry by integrating bioinformatic analysis with transcriptome data and experimental verification.Results
A total of 56 MnWRKY genes were identified and classified into three major groups (I-III), with group II further divided into five subgroups (IIa-IIe). Promoter analysis detected 577 cis-acting elements belonging to ten representative categories, among which ABA-responsive elements were the most abundant. Chromosomal localization showed that 73.2% of the genes were concentrated on the first three chromosomes, and collinearity analysis identified three tandem and 21 segmental duplication pairs. By integrating public RNA-seq data with our transcriptome data from the drought-tolerant cultivar Yunsang-2, we found eight MnWRKY genes (MnWRKY4, MnWRKY8, MnWRKY9, MnWRKY11, MnWRKY13, MnWRKY18, MnWRKY20, and MnWRKY21) that were consistently upregulated under drought in both datasets. qRT-PCR further confirmed that MnWRKY9 and MnWRKY18 were significantly induced by drought, with MnWRKY9 showing the strongest response. Transient expression in tobacco leaves showed that MnWRKY9 localizes to the nucleus.Conclusions
MnWRKY9 is identified as a candidate regulator of drought response in mulberry. These results provide a useful resource for further functional studies of WRKY genes and for molecular breeding of drought-tolerant mulberry varieties.
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BibTeX
@article{li2026genomewide,
title = {{Genome-Wide Identification of the WRKY Gene Family in Mulberry and Screening of Consistently Drought-Responsive Candidates.}},
author = {Jie Li and Weifen Liu and Lei Xia and Chunping Huang and Yuemei Chen and Xianyan Zou},
journal = {Genes},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.3390/genes17101212},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42938327},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Genome-Wide Identification of the WRKY Gene Family in Mulberry and Screening of Consistently Drought-Responsive Candidates.
AU - Jie Li
AU - Weifen Liu
AU - Lei Xia
AU - Chunping Huang
AU - Yuemei Chen
AU - Xianyan Zou
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/29
JO - Genes
DO - 10.3390/genes17101212
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42938327
AB - Background WRKY transcription factors are widely involved in plant responses to drought. Mulberry (Morus alba) is an economically important tree in Southwest China, yet its WRKY gene family has not been systematically characterized at the genome level.Methods In this study, we identified the WRKY gene family in mulberry by integrating bioinformatic analysis with transcriptome data and experimental verification.Results A total of 56 MnWRKY genes were identified and classified into three major groups (I-III), with group II further divided into five subgroups (IIa-IIe). Promoter analysis detected 577 cis-acting elements belonging to ten representative categories, among which ABA-responsive elements were the most abundant. Chromosomal localization showed that 73.2% of the genes were concentrated on the first three chromosomes, and collinearity analysis identified three tandem and 21 segmental duplication pairs. By integrating public RNA-seq data with our transcriptome data from the drought-tolerant cultivar Yunsang-2, we found eight MnWRKY genes (MnWRKY4, MnWRKY8, MnWRKY9, MnWRKY11, MnWRKY13, MnWRKY18, MnWRKY20, and MnWRKY21) that were consistently upregulated under drought in both datasets. qRT-PCR further confirmed that MnWRKY9 and MnWRKY18 were significantly induced by drought, with MnWRKY9 showing the strongest response. Transient expression in tobacco leaves showed that MnWRKY9 localizes to the nucleus.Conclusions MnWRKY9 is identified as a candidate regulator of drought response in mulberry. These results provide a useful resource for further functional studies of WRKY genes and for molecular breeding of drought-tolerant mulberry varieties.
SN - 2073-4425
ER -