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The OVATE gene family plays an important role in regulating the development of plant organs and resisting stress, but its expression characteristics and functions in sorghum have not been

revealed. In this study, we identified 26 OVATE genes in the sorghum BTx623 genome, which were divided into four groups and distributed unevenly across 9 chromosomes. Evolutionary analysis

showed that after differentiation between sorghum and Arabidopsis, the OVATE gene family may have experienced unique expansion events, and all OVATE family members were negatively selected.

Transcriptome sequencing and RT-qPCR results showed that OVATE genes in sorghum showed diverse expression characteristics, such as gene SORBl_3001G468900 and SORBl_3009G173400 were

significantly expressed in seeds, while SORBI_3005G042700 and SORBI_3002G417700 were only highly expressed in L1. Meantime, in the promoter region, a large number of hormone-associated

cis-acting elements were identified, and these results suggest that members of the OVATE gene family may be involved in regulating specific development of sorghum leaves and seeds. This

study improves the understanding of the OVATE gene family of sorghum and provides important clues for further exploration of the function of the OVATE gene family.

For many food and industrial crops, the growth and development of grains and seeds are of special importance for their economic value and food security. Sorghum bicolor (L.), as an important

food and bioenergy crop, is widely planted in many areas around the world1. The harvested sorghum seeds and stalks can be used not only for brewing wine and sugar, but also as animal feed

to improve the industrial value of sorghum2. Meanwhile, due to its excellent drought resistance and salinity tolerance, sorghum has become a representative of C4 model crops and has been

applied in many stress tolerance studies 3. With the rapid development of the brewing and clean bioenergy industries, the market demand for sorghum is gradually increasing. However, compared

with field crops such as maize and rice, the study of seed development and yield traits of sorghum still needs to be strengthened4,5,6,7.

In the current study, we have comprehensively identified the members of the OVATE gene family in sorghum, and analyzed their gene structure, protein motif and cis-acting elements in the

promoter region. Meanwhile, its evolutionary characteristics were analyzed by phylogenetic and genome-wide synteny analysis. On this basis, transcriptome sequencing and RT-qPCR analysis were

used to determine the expression levels of the OVATE gene family members in sorghum to reveal the candidate family members that have the potential to regulate tissue development. Our

research not only provides a global perspective for the functional evolution of OVATE gene family in sorghum genome, but also provides important clues for further understanding its

regulatory role in sorghum growth and development through quantitative expression analysis.

The “JingDuXiaoBaiRen” sorghum variety is planted in the Moutai College Germplasm Resource Garden in Guizhou Province, China (27.74°N, 106.33°E). Three biological replicates of seeds (S1 and

S2 represent seed formation and filling stages, respectively) and leaves (L1 and L2 sampling times correspond to seeds) samples at different developmental stages were collected.

Subsequently, these samples are placed in a -80 ℃ refrigerator until they are used.

The data were analyzed for data processing and significant differences using SPSS 22.0 and plotted using Python 3.6 and TBtools. The data obtained were shown below mean ± standard deviation

(SD). Data were all analyzed using Student’s t-test and one-way ANOVA. In the representation of the results, different letters were used to indicate that the differences were statistically

significant (P