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Background: Plant aquaporins are critical genetic players performing multiple biological functions, especially climate resilience and water-use efficiency. Their genomic diversity across genus Oryza is yet to be explored., Results: This study identified 369 aquaporin-encoding genes from 11 cultivated and wild rice species and further categorized these into four major subfamilies, among which small basic intrinsic proteins are speculated to be ancestral to all land plant aquaporins. Evolutionarily conserved motifs in peptides of aquaporins participate in transmembrane transport of materials and their relatively complex gene structures provide an evolutionary playground for regulation of genome structure and transcription. Duplication and evolution analyses revealed higher genetic conservation among Oryza aquaporins and strong purifying selections are assisting in conserving the climate resilience associated functions. Promoter analysis highlighted enrichment of gene upstream regions with cis-acting regulatory elements involved in diverse biological processes, whereas miRNA target site prediction analysis unveiled substantial involvement of osa-miR2102-3p, osa-miR2927 and osa-miR5075 in post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression patterns. Moreover, expression patterns of japonica aquaporins were significantly perturbed in response to different treatment levels of six phytohormones and four abiotic stresses, suggesting their multifarious roles in plants survival under stressed environments. Furthermore, superior haplotypes of seven conserved orthologous aquaporins for higher thousand-grain weight are reported from a gold mine of 3,010 sequenced rice pangenomes., Conclusions: This study unveils the complete genomic atlas of aquaporins across genus Oryza and provides a comprehensive genetic resource for genomics-assisted development of climate-resilient rice cultivars., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Water is essential for all living organisms. Aquaporin proteins are the major facilitator of water transport activity through cell membranes of plants including soybean. These proteins are diverse in plants and belong to a large major intrinsic (MIP) protein family. In higher plants, MIPs are classified into five subfamilies including plasma membrane intrinsic proteins (PIP), tonoplast intrinsic proteins (TIP), NOD26-like intrinsic proteins (NIP), small basic intrinsic proteins (SIP), and the recently discovered X intrinsic proteins (XIP). This paper reports genome wide assembly of soybean MIPs, their functional prediction and expression analysis. Using a bioinformatic homology search, 66 GmMIPs were identified in the soybean genome. Phylogenetic analysis of amino acid sequences of GmMIPs divided the large and highly similar multi-gene family into 5 subfamilies: GmPIPs, GmTIPs, GmNIPs, GmSIPs and GmXIPs. GmPIPs consisted of 22 genes and GmTIPs 23, which showed high sequence similarity within subfamilies. GmNIPs contained 13 and GmSIPs 6 members which were diverse. In addition, we also identified a two member GmXIP, a distinct 5(th) subfamily. GmMIPs were further classified into twelve subgroups based on substrate selectivity filter analysis. Expression analyses were performed for a selected set of GmMIPs using semi-quantitative reverse transcription (semi-RT-qPCR) and qPCR. Our results suggested that many GmMIPs have high sequence similarity but diverse roles as evidenced by analysis of sequences and their expression. It can be speculated that GmMIPs contains true aquaporins, glyceroporins, aquaglyceroporins and mixed transport facilitators.

Water is essential for all living organisms. Aquaporin proteins are the major facilitator of water transport activity through cell membranes of plants including soybean. These proteins are diverse in plants and belong to a large major intrinsic (MIP) protein family. In higher plants, MIPs are classified into five subfamilies including plasma membrane intrinsic proteins (PIP), tonoplast intrinsic proteins (TIP), NOD26-like intrinsic proteins (NIP), small basic intrinsic proteins (SIP), and the recently discovered X intrinsic proteins (XIP). This paper reports genome wide assembly of soybean MIPs, their functional prediction and expression analysis. Using a bioinformatic homology search, 66 GmMIPs were identified in the soybean genome. Phylogenetic analysis of amino acid sequences of GmMIPs divided the large and highly similar multi-gene family into 5 subfamilies: GmPIPs, GmTIPs, GmNIPs, GmSIPs and GmXIPs. GmPIPs consisted of 22 genes and GmTIPs 23, which showed high sequence similarity within subfamilies. GmNIPs contained 13 and GmSIPs 6 members which were diverse. In addition, we also identified a two member GmXIP, a distinct 5th subfamily. GmMIPs were further classified into twelve subgroups based on substrate selectivity filter analysis. Expression analyses were performed for a selected set of GmMIPs using semi-quantitative reverse transcription (semi-RT-qPCR) and qPCR. Our results suggested that many GmMIPs have high sequence similarity but diverse roles as evidenced by analysis of sequences and their expression. It can be speculated that GmMIPs contains true aquaporins, glyceroporins, aquaglyceroporins and mixed transport facilitators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]