Genome-wide analysis of MIKC-type MADS-box genes in wheat: pervasive duplications may have facilitated adaptation to different environmental conditions

Background: Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is one of the most important crops worldwide. Given a growing global population coupled with increasingly challenging climate and cultivation conditions, facilitating wheat breeding by fine-tuning important traits such as stress resistance, yield and plant architecture is of great importance. Since they are involved in virtually all aspects of plant development and stress responses, prime candidates for improving these traits are MIKC-type (type II) MADS-box genes. Results: We present a detailed overview of number, phylogeny, and expression of 201 wheat MIKC-type MADS-box genes, which can be assigned to 15 subfamilies. Homoeolog retention is significantly above the average genome-wide retention rate for wheat genes, indicating that many MIKC-type homoeologs are functionally important and not redundant. Gene expression is generally in agreement with the expected subfamily-specific expression pattern, indicating broad conservation of function of MIKC-type genes during wheat evolution. We find the extensive expansion of some MIKC-type subfamilies to be correlated with their chromosomal location and propose a link between MADS-box gene duplications and the adaptability of wheat. A number of MIKC-type genes encode for truncated proteins that lack either the DNA-binding or protein-protein interaction domain and occasionally show novel expression patterns, possibly pointing towards neofunctionalization. Conclusions: Conserved and neofunctionalized MIKC-type genes may have played an important role in the adaptation of wheat to a diversity of conditions, hence contributing to its importance as a global staple food. Therefore, we propose that MIKC-type MADS-box genes are especially well suited for targeted breeding approaches and phenotypic fine tuning.