TITLE:
Identification, Structural Analyses of EXO70 Gene Family in Arabidopsis and Functional Analysis of EXO70B1 Employing Nicotiana benthamiana
AUTHORS:
Qiang Lin, Jiayu Zeng, Peng Jia, Kai Chen, Hongbin Zhang, Jianzhong Huang
KEYWORDS:
EXO70, Arabidopsis thaliana, Cell Death, Nicotiana benthamiana
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Biosciences and Medicines,
Vol.13 No.10,
October
28,
2025
ABSTRACT: The EXO70 gene is a very important component of the exocytosis complex, involving a series of biological processes including plant cell division and immune regulation. The Arabidopsis thaliana genome comprises 23 EXO70 paralogs. However, a systematic identification and structural analysis of the EXO70 gene family in Arabidopsis is currently lacking. Here, we first analyzed the protein information encoded by these 23 genes and explored their evolutionary relationships. Moreover, tertiary structure prediction results declared that the majority of members within the same subclass exhibited similar protein structures, providing additional insights into the evolutionary relationship of the EXO70 gene. Finally, we only focused on the EXO70B1, which is one of the EXO70 family members, and it will be of interest to study the functional role of the other members as well. EXO70B1 interacts with FLS2 in a bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) assay. The transient expression results demonstrated that TN2 (TIR-NBS 2)-induced cell death was inhibited by EXO70B1, but not EXO70B2, in Nicotiana benthamiana. In summary, the functional divergence between EXO70B1 and EXO70B2 occurs despite their high sequence and structural similarity.