Physicochemical properties and homology studies of the floral meristem identity gene LFY in nonflowering and flowering plants

In flowering plants, the LEAFY (LFY) gene controls floral meristem activity. In early land plants such as mosses and ferns, it, however, has a minimum role in cell division and development of diploid sporophyte. Homology modeling, an accurate and efficient protein structure prediction method, was used to construct a 3D model of the LEAFY protein in nonflowering and flowering plants. The present study examines the following species: Charophyte green algae, Physcomitrella, Ceratopteris, Picea, and Arabidopsis, as they are the popularly used model organisms for developmental studies. LEAFY protein sequences from the model organisms were aligned by multiple sequence alignment. 3D models of the LEAFY protein from all the model organisms was constructed using the PHYRE2 program with 100% confidence, and the constructed models were evaluated using the MolProbity tool. On the basis of the conserved regions, Charophyte green algae shared 38–46% sequence similarity with Physcomitrella sp., 37–46% similarity with Ceratopteris sp., 33–41% similarity with Picea sp., and 32–38% similarity with Arabidopsis sp. The Motif Finder server identified the protein family domain FLO_LFY and LFY_SAM, whose function is floral meristem development. Secondary structure prediction analysis indicated that the LEAFY protein belongs to the alpha (α) protein class, which is stable against mutation and thus limits structural changes in the LEAFY protein. The study findings reveal two distinct clusters of the LFY gene from the common ancestor green algae. One cluster is present in nonflowering plants that include mosses, pteridophytes, and gymnosperms, and the other cluster is present in flowering plants that include orchids, monocots, dicots, and angiosperms.