ZIP — Cicer arietinum

Summary

LOC101488825 (CaZIP, also known as CaAGO7) on chickpea chromosome 2 encodes an Argonaute-family protein with Piwi, PAZ and RNaseH-like domains and RNA endonuclease activity. It is associated with RNA binding, gene silencing by miRNA, posttranscriptional gene silencing, and ta-siRNA and lsiRNA processing. The gene is associated with temporal regulation of development, vegetative phase change, maintenance of shoot apical meristem identity, stem cell population maintenance, and both male and female meiotic nuclear division. It is associated with drought tolerance, response to water, iron transport, sulfur metabolism, microgametogenesis, and megagametogenesis. Localisation evidence places the product in the nucleus, cytoplasm, nucleolus and NOR. Studies of related genes in other species link the family to juvenile-to-adult transition, leaf morphology and polarity, auxin signalling, antiviral defence, and TAS3 tasiRNA biogenesis.