In silico analysis of phytohormone metabolism and communication pathways in citrus transcriptome

Plant hormones play a crucial role in integrating endogenous and exogenous signals and in determining developmental responses to form the plant body throughout its life cycle. In citrus species, several economically important processes are controlled by phytohormones, including seed germination, sec...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Vera Quecini, Gisele A.M. Torres, Vicente E. de Rosa Jr, Marcos A. Gimenes, Jeanne B. de M. Machado, Antonio V. de O. Figueira, Vagner Benedito, Maria Luisa P.N. Targon, Mariângela Cristofani-Yaly
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Sociedade Brasileira de Genética 2007-01-01
Series:Genetics and Molecular Biology
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Online Access:http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1415-47572007000500002
Description
Summary:Plant hormones play a crucial role in integrating endogenous and exogenous signals and in determining developmental responses to form the plant body throughout its life cycle. In citrus species, several economically important processes are controlled by phytohormones, including seed germination, secondary growth, fruit abscission and ripening. Integrative genomics is a powerful tool for linking newly researched organisms, such as tropical woody species, to functional studies already carried out on established model organisms. Based on gene orthology analyses and expression patterns, we searched the Citrus Genome Sequencing Consortium (CitEST) database for Expressed Sequence Tags (EST) consensus sequences sharing similarity to known components of hormone metabolism and signaling pathways in model species. More than 600 homologs of functionally characterized hormone metabolism and signal transduction members from model species were identified in citrus, allowing us to propose a framework for phytohormone signaling mechanisms in citrus. A number of components from hormone-related metabolic pathways were absent in citrus, suggesting the presence of distinct metabolic pathways. Our results demonstrated the power of comparative genomics between model systems and economically important crop species to elucidate several aspects of plant physiology and metabolism.
ISSN:1415-4757
1678-4685