Different scales of gene duplications occurring at different times have jointly shaped the NBS-LRR genes in Prunus species.

In this study, genome-wide identification, phylogenetic relationships, duplication time and selective pressure of the NBS-LRR genes, an important group of plant disease-resistance genes (R genes), were performed to uncover their genetic evolutionary patterns in the six Prunus species. A total of 1946 NBS-LRR genes were identified; specifically, 589, 361, 284, 281, 318, and 113 were identified in Prunus yedoensis, P. domestica, P. avium, P. dulcis, P. persica and P. yedoensis var. nudiflora, respectively. Two NBS-LRR gene subclasses, TIR-NBS-LRR (TNL) and non-TIR-NBS-LRR (non-TNL), were also discovered. In total, 435 TNL and 1511 non-TNL genes were identified and could be classified into 30/55/75 and 103/158/191 multi-gene families, respectively, according to three different criteria. Higher Ks and Ka/Ks values were detected in TNL gene families than in non-TNL gene families. These results indicated that the TNL genes had more members involved in relatively ancient duplications and were affected by stronger selection pressure than the non-TNL genes. In general, the NBS-LRR genes were shaped by species-specific duplications, and lineage-specific duplications occurred at recent and relatively ancient periods among the six Prunus species. Therefore, different duplicated copies of NBS-LRRs can resist specific pathogens and will provide an R-gene library for resistance breeding in Prunus species.