Drought and salinity are two major environmental factors determining plant productivity that due to their high magnitude of impact and wide distribution. The regulatory circuits include stress sensors, signaling pathways comprising a network of protein-protein reactions, transcription factors and promoters, and finally the output proteins or metabolites. Plant receptor-like kinases (RLKs) are transmembrane proteins family, are predicted to be major components of the signaling pathways that allow plants to respond to diverse environmental and development condition. Subfamily of Catharanthus roseus RLK1-like kinases (CrRLK1Ls) is a novel type of RLK, was identified in Arabidopsis with 17 members carrying a putative extracellular carbonhydrate-binding malectin-like domain. To study the function of CrRLK1Ls subfamily in rice which is a most widely consumed staple food, we produced the phylogenomic data with the integration of microarray-based anatomical and stress expression profiling data to the context of rice CrRLK1Ls family phylogenic tree. The expression profiling data are based on a large number of public microarray data such as 1150 Affymetrix arrays and 209 Agilent 44K arrays. Chromosomal localization of CrRLK1Ls reveals that three of 16 genes were tandem duplicated. Subsequently, we identified 7 genes that showed circadian regulation pattern and three genes of them simultaneously response to drought stress: two were down-regulated and one was up-regulated. Functional gene network development mediated by these stress responsible genes might be an useful foundation to explain the molecular mechanism of stress response mediated by this gene family.

Drought and salinity are two major environmental factors determining plant productivity that due to their high magnitude of impact and wide distribution. The regulatory circuits include stress sensors, signaling pathways comprising a network of protein-protein reactions, transcription factors and promoters, and finally the output proteins or metabolites. Plant receptor-like kinases (RLKs) are transmembrane proteins family, are predicted to be major components of the signaling pathways that allow plants to respond to diverse environmental and development condition. Subfamily of Catharanthus roseus RLK1-like kinases (CrRLK1Ls) is a novel type of RLK, was identified in Arabidopsis with 17 members carrying a putative extracellular carbonhydrate-binding malectin-like domain. To study the function of CrRLK1Ls subfamily in rice which is a most widely consumed staple food, we produced the phylogenomic data with the integration of microarray-based anatomical and stress expression profiling data to the context of rice CrRLK1Ls family phylogenic tree. The expression profiling data are based on a large number of public microarray data such as 1150 Affymetrix arrays and 209 Agilent 44K arrays. Chromosomal localization of CrRLK1Ls reveals that three of 16 genes were tandem duplicated. Subsequently, we identified 7 genes that showed circadian regulation pattern and three genes of them simultaneously response to drought stress: two were downregulated and one was up-regulated. Functional gene network development mediated by these stress responsible genes might be an useful foundation to explain the molecular mechanism of stress response mediated by this gene family.