Identification and characterization of NF-Y gene family in walnut (Juglans regia L.)

Background The eukaryotic transcription factor NF-Y (which consists of NF-YA, NF-YB and NF-YC subunits) is involved in many important plant development processes. There are many reports about the NF-Y family in Arabidopsis and other plant species. However, there are no reports about the NF-Y family in walnut (Juglans regia L.). Results Thirty-three walnut NF-Y genes (JrNF-Ys) were identified and mapped on the walnut genome. The JrNF-Y gene family consisted of 17 NF-YA genes, 9 NF-YB genes, and 7 NF-YC genes. The structural features of the JrNF-Y genes were investigated by comparing their evolutionary relationship and motif distributions. The comparisons indicated the NF-Y gene structure was both conserved and altered during evolution. Functional prediction and protein interaction analysis were performed by comparing the JrNF-Y protein structure with that in Arabidopsis. Two differentially expressed JrNF-Y genes were identified. Their expression was compared with that of three JrCOs and two JrFTs using quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR). The results revealed that the expression of JrCO2 was positively correlated with the expression of JrNF-YA11 and JrNF-YA12. In contrast, JrNF-CO1 and JrNF-YA12 were negatively correlated. Conclusions Thirty-three JrNF-Ys were identified and their evolutionary, structure, biological function and expression pattern were analyzed. Two of the JrNF-Ys were screened out, their expression was differentially expressed in different development periods of female flower buds, and in different tissues (female flower buds and leaf buds). Based on prediction and experimental data, JrNF-Ys may be involved in flowering regulation by co-regulate the expression of flowering genes with other transcription factors (TFs). The results of this study may make contribution to the further investigation of JrNF-Y family. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12870-018-1459-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

that in Arabidopsis thaliana, the NF-YA subfamily is encoded by ten NF-YA genes, the NF-YB subfamily is encoded by thirteen NF-YB genes, and the NF-YC subfamily is encoded by thirteen NF-YC genes [11]. Other studies indicated that each NF-Y subfamily in Arabidopsis thaliana is encoded by ten genes [3,12].
The wood and fruit of walnut (J. regia L.) are highly valuable, and the research of walnut focus on molecular breeding and flowering in recent years [60][61][62][63][64][65]. However, less attention were paid to walnut compare with other plants, because it must grow for many years before it becomes productive. The walnut genome was only published recently [66]. The purpose of this study was to identify NF-Y gene family in walnut (JrNF-Y) and to characterize their structure and function. Flower transition is an important time in plant growth [30], therefore, we focused on this period. Reverse genetic analysis makes it easier to predict the function of the same structural proteins among different species by constructing phylogenetic trees [67] and by analyzing gene expression patterns [28,68]. The NF-Y family in Arabidopsis has been well characterized and annotated [11]. Therefore, sequencing results from walnut flower buds and leaf buds were searched with Arabidopsis NF-Y protein sequences to identify candidate NF-Y transcription factors in walnut. These candidate NF-Y members were then aligned with the published walnut genome. The NF-Y proteins sequences of walnut and Arabidopsis were aligned and a phylogenetic tree was constructed. The conserved domains of the walnut NF-Y protein sequences were aligned with mouse NF-Y protein sequences to further analyze the evolutionary relationships. The motifs of the walnut NF-Y proteins were predicted to analyze their structural features. The functions of walnut NF-Y members were annotated and their interactions were analyzed based on corresponding NF-Ys in Arabidopsis. Microarray data from transcriptome sequencing was used to construct the expression patterns of JrNF-Ys at different stages and in different tissues. Differentially expressed NF-Y members and the annotated FLOWER LOCUS T (FT) and CONSTANS (CO) genes were identified in the walnut transcriptome, and their relative expression levels were measured using real-time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR) method. The relative expression levels were used to investigate possible associations among NF-Y, CO, and FT. Published data about walnut protein and cDNA data is limited. Therefore, some walnut NF-Ys were probably not included in our retrieval results. However, the results of this experiment provide a beginning point for further study about the NF-Y gene family in walnut.

Identification and genomic localization of NF-Ys in walnut
The full-length protein sequences of Arabidopsis NF-Ys [11] were used to search the walnut transcriptome database using BLAST (version 2.60) [69] and HMMER (version 3.0) software [70]. Eighty-eight candidate NF-Y genes were identified in walnut by BLAST. Forty-four candidate genes were identified by HMMER. The results of the two search methods were merged resulting in 104 candidate NF-Y genes. Some of the candidate genes were discarded because they were too long or too short or because they had improper domains. Some sequences were considered to be the same gene because their similarity was > 98%. Finally, 33 candidate NF-Y genes were identified and translated into amino acid sequences according to the code frame shown in CD-Search (https:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/cdd/wrpsb.cgi). The 33 candidate genes included 17 NF-YA genes, 9 NF-YB genes, and 7 NF-YC genes. These genes were named JrNY-F for J. regia. The number after gene name indicated the numerical order of the local gene ID. Each JrNF-Y protein was matched against one NF-Y protein in Arabidopsis (Table 1; priority: Query Cover>Ident>E value).
Walnut genome data was uploaded to NCBI (https:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/291087) in 2015. This was an enormous contribution even though the data was spliced at the level of scaffold. We attempted to map the cDNA sequences of the candidate NF-Ys on the published walnut genome (GCA 001411555.1wgs.5d scaffolds). In general, cDNA acquired by transcriptome sequencing does not match well against a single scaffold due to post-transcriptional processing. Most of the other NF-Ys partially matched the published data [e.g., Cluster-14,922.20995 (JrNF-YA1) partially matched NW_017389264.1] (Fig. 1). However, Cluster-14,922.50413 (JrNF-YC4) completely matched NW_017389324.1. Optimal

Multiple alignments and phylogenetic analyses of the JrNF-Ys
Protein sequences of the three NF-Y subfamilies (i.e., 33 candidate NF-Y genes) were aligned using clustalX software [71]. The results showed that each member of the JrNF-Y family member contains an interaction domain for interacting with other NF-Y subunits and a DNA binding domain for recognizing CCAAT binding sites. The three NF-Y subunits of grape, orange and mouse were included as an out-group to root the phylogenetic trees and for comparison. The interaction domain and the DNA binding domain were well conserved between plants and animal. The core conserved regions of the JrNF-YA, JrNF-YB and JrNF-YC proteins were 55, 92, and 107 amino acids long, respectively. In most eukaryotes there is a clear boundary between the conserved and non-conserved regions of NF-Y proteins [11,28]. Studies in yeast have found that CBF-B (NF-YA) and CBF-C (NF-YC) subfamilies are both often accompanied by large amounts of glutamine and some hydrophobic residues, which are involved in transcriptional activation [72]. The conserved regions in the JrNF-Ys were similar; however, there were obvious differences among them (Fig. 2, Additional file 1). Even within the same subfamily, the NF-Y protein sequences showed variability. Therefore, the transcriptional activities of the transcription factors also need to be verified.
Multiple sequence alignment of the conserved regions in the three subfamilies showed that 31 of 55 amino acid residues in the conserved region of NF-YA were absolutely conserved compared with 58 of 92 residues in NF-YB and 86 of 107 residues in NF-YC. These values were much greater than those in Arabidopsis, which had 24 of 53 residues absolutely conserved in NF-YA, 9 of 100 residues absolutely conserved in NF-YB, and 4 of 90 residues absolutely conserved in NF-YC [11]. The conserved regions of the JrNF-YA and JrNF-YB subfamilies were remarkably consistent with the NF-YA and NF-YB subfamilies in grape, orange and mouse. Comparing the conserved regions in walnut with those in mouse, 22 of 86 residues were different in NF-YC, 3 of 31 residues were different in NF-YA, and 5 of 58 residues were different in NF-YB.
The above results indicate that a less proportion of residues were conserved in JrNF-YC than in JrNF-YA and JrNF-YB. The valine(V) and lysine(K) between the nineteenth and twentieth amino acids were unique in mouse and were not observed in seven JrNF-YC sequences and other plant NF-YC sequences (V and K were not numbered and were marked with an "X" at the bottom of NF-YC sequences in Fig. 2). This may reflect the difference between animal and plant. It is worth noting that the initial position of the NF-YC domain reported in Arabidopsis was identified at the L locus whereas the initial position of the JrNF-YC domain was 25 amino acids before the L locus [11].
To investigate the evolutionary relationship between the walnut NF-Y family and the Arabidopsis NF-Y family, an un-rooted phylogenetic tree was constructed using the NF-Y protein sequences of Arabidopsis and walnut (Fig. 3). The phylogenetic tree showed close relationships among the candidate NF-Ys within each of the three subfamilies. The exceptions were JrNF-YC1 and JrNF-YB11. The close evolutionary relationships indicated that the NF-Y protein family in Arabidopsis has similar structure and function to that in walnut.
A rooted phylogenetic tree of each JrNF-Y subfamily was generated with the conserved domain sequences (Fig. 4). The sequences of the three NF-Y subfamilies in mouse were used as the roots of the phylogenetic trees. The multiple sequence alignment results of each JrNF-Y domain were then used to construct an adjacent evolutionary tree. MEME software (http://meme-suite.org/ tools/meme) was used to predict the motif distributions with the full-length protein sequences of the three JrNF-Y subfamilies ( Fig. 4) [73]. Initially, the construction of the adjacent evolutionary tree and the prediction of the motif distributions were done separately. Then we observed that the two parts showed some important relationships. For example, the evolutionary relationships indicated close genetic relationships among JrNF-YA3, JrNF-YA4, and JrNF-YA15. Furthermore, their motif distributions were similar. Although the motif distributions were predicted by the JrNF-Y sequence (full-length) and the phylogenetic tree was constructed using domain sequences (fragments), the two results were in good agreement. This phenomenon was also observed in Arabidopsis [11].

Function prediction and protein interaction
Because of the lack of relevant data about walnut proteins, we predicted the function of JrNF-Y proteins based on corresponding NF-Y proteins in Arabidopsis [68]. We used the Blastp program to align the 33 walnut NF-Y proteins with 36 Arabidopsis NF-Y proteins [69]. Each JrNF-Y protein was closely aligned to at least one Arabidopsis NF-Y protein. Some of the JrNF-Y proteins were closely aligned to the same Arabidopsis NF-Y protein.
Overall, the 33 JrNF-Y proteins were most closely aligned to 11 Arabidopsis NF-Y proteins (NF-YA1/NF-YA3/NF-YA9/NF-YA10/NF-YB3/NF-YB5/ NF-YB7/NF-YB8/NF-YC1/NF-YC2/NF-YC9) ( Table 2). In order to investigate the interaction between the 33 JrNF-Ys, we uploaded the 11 Arabidopsis NF-Y proteins which represented the 33 JrNF-Y proteins to the String website [74]. The interaction networks were mapped out according to the 11 input proteins and their 5 predicted functional partners (Fig. 5). The 11 input proteins were annotated to the common function of stimulating the transcription of various genes by recognizing and binding to a CCAAT motif in promoters. Besides, other functions were annotated to these proteins, such as regulation of timing of transition from vegetative to reproductive phase (NF-YA1), embryo development (NF-YA9), long-day photoperiodism and flowering (NF-YB2), positive regulation of transcription (NF-YA3/ NF-YA3/NF-YA10/NF-YB3/NF-YB5/NF-YB7/NF-YB8/NF -YC1/NF-YC2), abscisic acid-activated signaling pathway (NF-YB6/NF-YC9). In addition, the interaction in  (See figure on previous page.) Fig. 2 Multiple alignment of the JrNF-Y family was performed by Clustal X. Conserved regions of all JrNF-Y proteins and Mus musculus NF-Y proteins (NF-YMouse) are shown. NF-YAMouse, NF-YBMouse, NF-YCMouse were respectively compared with the JrNF-YA, JrNF-YB, JrNF-YC subfamilies. Regions required for DNA binding or interacted with NF-YA, NF-YB and NF-YC subfamilies were previously defined in mammals and yeast. Amino acids in black boxes/white letters were identical in 100% of all aligned sequences. Amino acid sequences with the symbol "#" were conserved in walnut but divided when compared with mouse. Amino acid sequences with the symbol "x" were unique in mouse, and only in the NF-YC subfamily Fig. 3 Phylogenetic analysis of NF-Y proteins in walnut and Arabidopsis. The phylogenetic tree was constructed by protein sequences of thirtythree NF-Ys in walnut (JrNF-Ys) and thirty-six NF-Ys in Arabidopsis [11]. Some reports indicate only 30 NF-Y proteins in Arabidopsis [3,12]. ** indicate NF-Ys reported by Siefers et al. [11] but not reported by either Zhao et al. [3] or Petroni et al. [12]. Purple, green and orange indicate the NF-YA, NF-YB, and NF-YC subfamilies, respectively. The nodes of walnut and Arabidopsis are indicated by blue and red lines, respectively. The bootstrap values are shown on branches JrNF-YA11 (q valueF_1vsJRL = 0.001, log2ratioF_ 1vsJRL = 2.02) and JrNF-YA12 (q valueF_1vsJRL = 0.046, log2ratioF_1vsJRL = 1.21; q valueF_1vsF_2 = 0.023, log2 ratioF_1vsF_2 = 1.47) were screened out for their differential expression patterns. The expression of JrNF-YA11 was up-regulated in female flower buds before flower transition (F_1) compared with that in leaf buds during flower transition (JRL) (Fig. 6). The expression of JrNF-YA12 in female flower buds before flower transition (F_1) was upregulated compared with that in (i) female  NF-YC2 Photooxidative stress response and flowering time regulation [31]; ER stress response [49].

JrNF-YC4
JrNF-YC5 JrNF-YC7 flower buds during flower transition (F_2) and (ii) leaf buds during flower transition (JRL). Some studies indicate that the transcription factor CO competes with other transcription factors (TFs) to regulate the expression of the FT gene [3]. We selected two walnut FTs (JrFT1 and JrFT2) and three walnut COs (JrCO1, JrCO2, and JrCO3) from the transcriptome sequencing data (Additional file 2). The relative expressions of the JrFTs, the JrCOs, and the differentially expressed JrNF-Ys were determined by qPCR (Fig. 7). The expression pattern of JrCO2 was similar to that of JrNF-YA11 and JrNF-YA12, and their expression trend were down-up-down in F_1, F_2, F_3 and JRL. The similarities also exist between the expression pattern of JrCO3 and JrFT2, and their expression trend were continuous decline in F_1, F_2, F_3 and JRL.

Discussion
The cDNA sequences of the JrNF-Y genes were aligned with the walnut genome. The cDNAs that were mapped to the genome segments were considered as the exon regions (e.g., the section between a1 and b1, Fig. 1c). Considering the post-transcriptional processing, we did not judge the adjacent regions (e.g., NW_017389264.1 44,361 to 44,488; Fig. 1c) to be intron regions even though the possibility exists. We only recorded the information about the start and end sites where cDNA matched the genomic scaffold segments (Table 1).
Thirty-six NF-Y protein sequences of Arabidopsis were used to construct a phylogenetic tree with thirty-three NF-Y protein sequences of walnut. Some studies suggest that six NF-Ys (i.e., NF-YB11/12/13 and NF-YC10/11/13) should not be included in the Arabidopsis NF-Y family because they do not include the proper structure [3]. Our phylogenetic tree seems to support this view (Fig. 3). The  Table 2) are listed in the upper left part of the figure. The network was constructed using the input proteins and six predicted functional partners of the input proteins. The network nodes represent proteins. The 3D structure of the proteins is shown inside the nodes. Edges represent protein-protein associations. The associations are meant to be specific and meaningful, i.e. proteins jointly contribute to a shared function; this does not necessarily mean they are physically bound to each other. The colors of the line indicate different data sources (https://string-db.org/) [74] six NF-Ys of Arabidopsis have a distant evolutionary relationship with the three clusters of NF-YA/B/C. None of the 33 JrNF-Ys was included in the same sub-cluster with the six Arabidopsis NF-Ys mentioned above.
There are obvious differences between NF-Y proteins in animals and plants (Fig. 2). Two amino acids were observed in mouse NF-Y sequences but not in plants NF-YC sequences. However, the evolutionary conservation of NF-Y proteins in mouse and plants was also demonstrated. The conserved region of NF-Y proteins in mouse and plants showed high similarity in all three subfamilies. In previous report [12], NF-YC conserved regions in Arabidopsis strart form the leucine (L) at the twenty-sixth site (Fig. 2). Sequence alignment indictaed that the 25 amino acid residues before the NF-YC conserved regions in previous report were consistent between mouse, Arabidopsis, walnut and orange.
Conservation and differentiation also exists between plants. Absolutely conserved sequences in black boxes/ white letters were shared by Arabidopsis, walnut, grape and orange. However, the first five amino acids (QQQLQ) of NF-YC (Fig. 2) were missing in NF-YC sequences of grape, and this situation did not exist in Arabidopsis, walnut and orange.
An interaction network among the 33 JrNF-Y proteins was established based on the 11 correlated Arabidopsis NF-Y proteins. The 11 input proteins were annotated to the function of regulation of timing of transition from vegetative to reproductive phase, embryo development, long-day photoperiodism and flowering, positive regulation of transcription, abscisic acid-activated signaling pathway. In addition, seven protein-protein interactions have been validated by lab experiments and other interaction relationships were predicted (https://string-db.org/). There is no doubt that the network provides valuable information for further research.
With the exception of JrNF-YA10, the expression of the JrNF-Y genes in female flower buds varied among development stages (i.e., before, during, and after flower transition, Fig. 6). This suggests that the NF-Y genes directly or indirectly participate in the process of flower bud development. Previous studies have confirmed or predicted that most NF-Ys are involved in the regulation of flowering time [3,11,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. This is also supported by our observation that the expression of 24 of 33 NF-Ys was greater in female flower buds (F_2) than in leaf buds (JRL) (Fig. 2). The expression of nine NF-Ys was greater in leaf buds than in female flower buds. It is possible that these NF-Ys inhibit flowering during the vegetative stage and this need more experimental evidence.
Previous studies have indicated that CO and NF-Y compete to regulate FT expression in Arabidopsis [3]. The NF-YA and CO proteins both can combine with an NF-YB-YC dimer to form either (i) an NF-YA-YB-YC trimer which inhibits FT expression or (ii) an NF-YA-YB-CO trimer which promotes FT expression. In the photoperiodic pathway of Arabidopsis, NF-YA expression is greatest during the day, whereas CO expression is greatest at night. The expression of FT reflects this diurnal pattern. Specifically, expression of FT is low during the day (when NF-YA expression is high) and high during the night (when CO expression is high). We observed that JrCO1 expression was negatively correlated with the expression of both JrNF-YA11 and JrNF-YA12. However, JrFT2 was positively rather than This hypothesis needs to be tested in future research work.

Conclusions
Thirty-three JrNF-Ys were identified and their evolutionary, structural, and biological functions were analyzed.
The biological function of the JrNF-Y proteins was predicted by comparative analysis with Arabidopsis NF-Y proteins, and this provided a rudimentary understood for the less-studied JrNF-Ys. Further more, Two JrNF-Ys were differentially expressed during the process of flower transition, which revealed that JrNF-Ys might play a role in flower transition. The results of this study may contribute to the future studies about the JrNF-Y family.  For the assembly library, clean data(clean reads) were obtained by removing reads containing adapter, reads containing ploy-N and low quality reads from raw data. Clean reads were de novo assembled using Trinity [75], and the transcriptome reference database was obtained. FPKM was used to obtain the relative expression levels [76].

Identification of JrNF-Ys
The protein sequences of 36 NF-Y genes (10 NF-YA genes, 13 NF-YB genes, and 13 NF-YC genes) in Arabidopsis were downloaded from TAIR (http://www.arabidopsis.org/) (Additional file 4) [11]. These sequences were used to search our walnut transcriptome database (unpublished) with the tblastn program in BLAST (blast-2.60) [69]. The screening threshold was set as 1e-10. The protein sequences of 10 NF-YA genes, 13 NF-YB genes, and 13 NF-YC genes were used to establish three Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) (Additional file 5) [70]. The three models were used as the query to search the transcriptome database with the screening threshold set at 1e-10.
The results of the BLAST and HMMER searchers were merged, resulting in 104 candidate NF-Y genes in walnut. All 104 candidates were uploaded to the NCBI to verify the existence of the core domain using Conserved Domain Search (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/ cdd/wrpsb.cgi) Some candidates were abandoned because they lacked the core domain. Other candidates were abandoned because their sequences were either too long or too short. Finally, 33 unigenes were identified and translated into amino acid sequences (Additional file 6).

Multiple alignments and phylogenetic analyses
Clustal X 2.1 [71] was used to align the protein sequences of the JrNF-Y genes. The conserved regions of the three subfamilies were identified using Arabidopsis as a reference. The conserved domains of three subfamilies in Arabidopsis, walnut, grape, orange and mouse were uploaded to the ESPript website (http://espript.ibcp.fr/ESPript/cgi-bin/ESPript.cgi) for editing [77]. The three subfamily sequences of Arabidopsis, grape and orange were download from the website of PlantTFDB (http://planttfdb.cbi.pku.edu.cn/) [78], and then HMM model of NF-YA, NF-YB, NF-YC of Arabidopsis, grape and orange were built based on these sequences (Additional file 5).
Protein sequences of NF-Y genes in Arabidopsis and walnut were used to construct a neighbor-joining tree with 1000 bootstrap replications using MEGA 6 software [79]. The phylogenetic tree constructed by MEGA was uploaded to iTOL (http://itol.embl.de/) for further editing. Motifs were predicted using MEME software (http://meme-suite.org/tools/meme). A protein interaction network was constructed with String software (https://string-db.org/) [74].

Quantitative real-time PCR
Total RNA was extracted using RNAout 1.0 (Tianenze, Beijing, China) by Novogene, Beijing, China. The synthesis of cDNA was performed using a PrimeScript RT Reagent Kit (TaKaRa, Dalian, China). Real-time quantification was performed using a CFX manager (Bio-Rad, USA) with the SYBR Green Realtime PCR Master Mix (Toyobo, Osaka, Japan). The protocol of the real-time PCR was as follows: initiation with 95°C for 5 min, followed by 40 cycles for 30 s at 94°C, 30 s at 55°C, and 30 s at 72°C. A melting curve was included from 65 to 95°C to verify the specificity of the amplified product. Each reaction was repeated three times. Walnut actin gene (forward: 5′-CCATCC AGGCTGTTCTCTC-3′, and reverse: 5′-GCAAGGTCC AGACGAAGG -3′) and walnut gadph gene (forward: 5′-ATTTGGAATCGTTGAGGGTCTTATG-3′ and reverse: 5′-AATGATGTTGAAGGAAGCAGCAC-3′) were used as the normalizer (Additional file 7). The results were evaluated by the method of the 2 -ΔCt [80].

Differential expression analysis
Prior to differential gene expression analysis, the read counts for each sequenced library were adjusted with EdgeR software. Differential expression analysis of two samples was performed using the DEGseq (2010) R package. The thresholds for significant differential expression were qvalue < 0.05 and |log2(foldchange)| > 1.

Additional files
Additional file 1: Figure S1