Ks appeared to be clustered together on distinct chromosomes, which includes chromosomes 1, two, four, 5, 7, eight and ten. In contrast, chromosome six had two CDPK genes, whereas chromosome 9 only encoded a single CDPK gene. Quite a few rounds of genome duplication events happen to be detected inside the maize genome. A total of ten segmental duplication events (ZmCPK8 and ZmCPK9, ZmCPK14 and ZmCPK15, ZmCPK16 and ZmCPK17, ZmCPK18 and ZmCPK19, ZmCPK20 and ZmCPK21, ZmCPK23 and ZmCPK24, ZmCPK29 and ZmCPK30, ZmCPK33 and ZmCPK34, ZmCPK35 and ZmCPK36, ZmCPK39 and ZmCPK40) and four gene pairs as tandem repeats (ZmCPK1 and ZmCPK2, ZmCPK3 and ZmCPK4, ZmCPK12 and ZmCPK13, ZmCPK26 and ZmCPK27) were discovered in the maize genome (See Figures 1, 3 and Additional file 3: Figure S3). TheseFigure two Exon ntron structures of maize CDPK genes. Boxes, exons; green boxes, open reading frames; lines, introns. Four groups were labeled as I, II, III, and IV.2,4-Dichloro-5,6-dimethylpyrimidine supplier Kong et al.CataCXium A Pd G2 site BMC Genomics 2013, 14:433 http://www.biomedcentral.com/14712164/14/Page 6 ofFigure three Chromosomal distributions of CDPK genes in the maize genome. The chromosome quantity is indicated in the top rated of each chromosome representation.results indicate that both segmental and tandem duplications play a vital part in CDPK gene expansion within the maize genome. In Arabidopsis, every of the 7 gene paralogs (AtCPK4 and AtCPK11, AtCPK1 and AtCPK2, AtCPK10 and AtCPK30, AtCPK7 and AtCPK8, AtCPK17 and AtCPK34, AtCPK15 and AtCPK21, AtCPK9 and AtCPK33) has the identical variety of EF hands and Nmyristoylation motifs. Additionally, both AtCPK4 and AtCPK11 regulate ABA signaling by means of the phosphorylation of ABF1 and ABF4. Within the present study, all the close paralogs, exceptZmCPK1 and ZmCPK2 and ZmCPK26 and ZmCPK27, had comparable traits, which integrated Nterminal, Nmyristoylation motifs and the variety of EF hands (Table 1). These final results suggest that the genes which can be close paralogs may possibly also have equivalent functions.Expression pattern with the maize CDPK genes in diverse tissues and developmental stagesTo investigate the expression profiles of CDPK in maize improvement, we analyzed the expression on the CDPKKong et al. BMC Genomics 2013, 14:433 http://www.biomedcentral.com/14712164/14/Page 7 ofgenes in distinct tissues and developmental stages making use of published microarray data. Thirtythree in the 40 maize CDPK genes possess the corresponding probe sets inside the dataset, and probes for the other 7 CDPK genes were not located. A heatmap representation in the expression profile for 33 CDPK genes for the duration of maize development is shown in Figure 4. Based on hierarchical clustering, the expression patterns of the CDPK genes may very well be divided into four groups: Groups A, B, C and D. Group A CDPK genes had decrease expression in leaves than in other organs, whereas Group D CDPK genes had been expressed most very in leaves and key roots.PMID:23667820 Interestingly, Group C genes have been expressed most very in anther, suggesting that Group C CDPK genes may possibly play an essential role in pollen development. Furthermore, Group B genes had greater expression in early developmental stages but reduced expression in endosperm and seed development, suggesting that Group B CDPK genes might negatively control seed improvement. In addition, CDPK duplicated gene pair expression patterns had been also investigated, and most gene pairs (ZmCPK8 and ZmCPK9, ZmCPK14 and ZmCPK15, ZmCPK16 and ZmCPK17, ZmCPK18 and ZmCPK19, ZmCPK20 and ZmCPK21, ZmCPK29 and ZmCPK30, ZmCPK39 and ZmCPK40) shared comparable expression patterns in n.