Identification of Tea Plant Purple Acid Phosphatase Genes and Their Expression Responses to Excess Iron

Purple acid phosphatase (PAP) encoding genes are a multigene family. PAPs require iron (Fe) to exert their functions that are involved in diverse biological roles including Fe homeostasis. However, the possible roles of PAPs in response to excess Fe remain unknown. In this study, we attempted to understand the regulation of PAPs by excess Fe in tea plant (). A genome-wide investigation of PAP encoding genes identified 19 members based on the conserved motifs. The phylogenetic analysis showed that PAPs could be clustered into four groups, of which group II contained two specific cysteine-containing motifs "GGECGV" and "YERTC". To explore the expression patterns of genes in response to excessive Fe supply, RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) analyses were performed to compare their transcript abundances between tea plants that are grown under normal and high iron conditions, respectively. 17 members were shown to be transcribed in both roots and leaves. When supplied with a high amount of iron, the expression levels of four genes were significantly changed. Of which, , and were shown as downregulated, while the highly expressed was upregulated. Moreover, was found to be alternatively spliced, suggesting its post-transcriptional regulation. The present work implicates that some genes could be associated with the responses of tea plants to the iron regime, which may offer a new direction towards a further understanding of iron homeostasis and provide the potential approaches for crop improvement in terms of iron biofortification.