Identification and network construction of zinc finger protein (ZFP) genes involved in the rice-Magnaporthe oryzae interaction

摘要

Previous studies have shown that some rice ZFP genes from the WRKY, RING, C2H2 and LSD1 families are associated with defense against Magnaporthe oryzae (M. oryzae). However, it remains unknown whether other ZFP families are involved in the rice-M. oryzae interaction. Here, we reported the global characterization of rice ZFP genes involved in the rice-M. oryzae interaction based on bioinfromatics analysis of important rice databases. By analyzing the data obtained from the microarray database, we found that 241 ZFP genes belonging to 27 families were expression-responsive to M. oryzae. Among these ZFP families, a total of 23 ZFP families were newly identified to be involved into the rice-M. oryzae interaction. The expression patterns of the ZFP genes with expression responsiveness to M. oryzae in each family were similar, suggesting that each family might play similar roles in the rice-M. oryzae interaction. The result of co-expression gene network analysis revealed that the M. oryzae-responsive ZFP genes were able to be co-expressed with those genes regulating some biological processes. These biological processes mainly included methylation modification, protein kinase activity, transcription activity, posttranscriptional modification and protein transfer. The result suggested that the regulated network of the rice-M. oryzae interaction was well organized, although it was complicated. Moreover, we identified four ZFP genes that might play important roles for regulating blast disease resistance.