| Summary: | During plant growth, development and stress adaption, receptor-like protein kinases (RLKs) are essential components in perceiving and integrating extracellular stimuli and transmitting the signals to activate the downstream signaling pathways. Cysteine-rich receptor-like protein kinases (CRKs) are a large subfamily of RLKs and their roles in modulating plant disease resistance are well elucidated. However, the roles of CRKs in plant abiotic stress responses, especially heat stress, are largely unknown. In this study, 35 <i>SlCRK</i> genes were identified in tomato (<i>Solanum lycopersicum</i>) based on the multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic relationships. <i>SlCRK</i> genes are tandemly distributed on seven chromosomes and have similar exon–intron organization and common conserved motifs. Various phytohormone responsive, stress responsive cis-regulatory elements and heat shock elements are predicted in the promoter regions of <i>SlCRK</i> genes. Transcriptome analysis of tomato fruits under heat stress revealed that most <i>SlCRK</i> genes were downregulated upon heat treatment. GO enrichment analyses of genes that were co-expressed with <i>SlCRK</i> members have identified various stress responses related and proteasomal protein catabolic process related genes, which may be involved in heat stress signaling. Overall, our results provide valuable information for further research on the roles of <i>SlCRK</i>s in response to abiotic stress, especially heat stress.
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