Background Enhancement of crop productivity under various abiotic stresses is a major objective of agronomic research. Wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) as one of the world’s staple crops is highly sensitive to heat stress, which can adversely affect both yield and quality. Plant heat shock factors (Hsfs) play a crucial role in abiotic and biotic stress response and conferring stress tolerance. Thus, multifunctional Hsfs may be potentially targets in generating novel strains that have the ability to survive environments that feature a combination of stresses. Result In this study, using the released genome sequence of wheat and the novel Hsf protein HMM (Hidden Markov Model) model constructed with the Hsf protein sequence of model monocot ( Oryza sativa ) and dicot ( Arabidopsis thaliana ) plants, genome-wide TaHsfs identification was performed. Eighty-two non-redundant and full-length TaHsfs were randomly located on 21 chromosomes. The structural characteristics and phylogenetic analysis with Arabidopsis thaliana , Oryza sativa and Zea mays were used to classify these genes into three major classes and further into 13 subclasses. A novel subclass, TaHsfC3 was found which had not been documented in wheat or other plants, and did not show any orthologous genes in A. thaliana , O. sativa , or Z. mays Hsf families. The observation of a high proportion of homeologous TaHsf gene groups suggests that the allopolyploid process, which occurred after the fusion of genomes, contributed to the expansion of the TaHsf family. Furthermore, TaHsfs expression profiling by RNA-seq revealed that the TaHsfs could be responsive not only to abiotic stresses but also to phytohormones. Additionally, the TaHsf family genes exhibited class-, subclass- and organ-specific expression patterns in response to various treatments. Conclusions A comprehensive analysis of Hsf genes was performed in wheat, which is useful for better understanding one of the most complex Hsf gene families. Variations in the expression patterns under different abiotic stress and phytohormone treatments provide clues for further analysis of the TaHsfs functions and corresponding signal transduction pathways in wheat. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12864-019-5617-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Heat shock transcription factor (Hsf) plays a transcriptional regulatory role in plants during heat stress and other abiotic stresses. 31 non-redundant ZmHsf genes from maize were identified and clustered in the reference genome sequenced by Single Molecule Real Time (SMRT). The amino acid length, chromosome location, and presence of functional domains and motifs of all ZmHsfs sequences were analyzed and determined. Phylogenetics and collinearity analyses reveal gene duplication events in Hsf family and collinearity blocks shared by maize, rice and sorghum. The results of RNA-Seq analysis of anthesis and post-anthesis periods in maize show different expression patterns of ZmHsf family members. Specially, ZmHsf26 of A2 subclass and ZmHsf23 of A6 subclass were distinctly up-regulated after heat shock (HS) at post-anthesis stage. Nanopore transcriptome sequencing of maize seedlings showed that alternative splicing (AS) events occur in ZmHsf04 and ZmHsf17 which belong to subclass A2 after heat shock. Through sequence alignment, semi-quantitative and quantitative RT-PCR, we found that intron retention events occur in response to heat shock, and newly splice isoforms, ZmHsf04-II and ZmHsf17-II, were transcribed. Both new isoforms contain several premature termination codons in their introns which may lead to early termination of translation. The ZmHsf04 expression was highly increased than that of ZmHsf17, and the up-regulation of ZmHsf04-I transcription level were significantly higher than that of ZmHsf04-II after HS.

From the perspective of wheat yield improvement, the coleoptile is vital for successful crop establishment, and long coleoptile lengths (CLs) are preferred in wheat-growing regions where deep planting is practiced. To determine the genetic basis of CL, we performed a genome-wide association study on a set of 707 Chinese wheat landraces using 18,594 single-nucleotide polymorphisms and 38,678 diversity array technology sequencing markers. We accordingly detected a total of 29 significant markers [−log 10 (P) > 4.76] distributed on chromosomes 2B,

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