Orthologs of the Arabidopsis CLAVATA1 Gene in the Cultivated Brassicaceae Plants

In Arabidopsis thaliana, the CLAVATA1 (CLV1) gene is involved in maintaining the balance between the stem cells in the central zone of the stem apical meristem and the determined cells at its periphery. However, CLV1 has not been previously characterized in other Brassicaceae. Using the direct amplification of genomic DNA, we obtained a full-length CLV1 ortholog from canola plants (Brassica napus), and also three CLV1 fragments from rape (B. rapa), canola (B. napus), and false flax (Camelina sativa), which corresponded to the transmembrane domain and a part of the kinase domain of the CLAVATA1 protein. The nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequences of the full-size CLV1 ortholog from B. napus were similar by 81 and 87% to the prototype gene from arabidopsis; in the case of shorter gene fragments, the similarity was as high as 91–93 and 98%, respectively. By their primary structure, the CLV1 genes in the Brassicaceae considerably differ from their putative structural homologs beyond this family.