Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) plays an important role in plant stress responses. Here, five FaG6PDH sequences were obtained in strawberry, designated as FaG6PDH-CY, FaG6PDH-P1, FaG6PDH-P1.1, FaG6PDH-P2 and FaG6PDH-P0, which were divided into cytosolic (CY) and plastidic (P) isoforms based on the bioinformatic analysis. The respective FaG6PDH genes had distinct expression patterns in all tissues and at different stages of fruit development. Notably, FaG6PDH-CY was the most highly expressed gene among five FaG6PDH members, indicating it encoded the major G6PDH isoform throughout the plant. FaG6PDH positively regulated cold tolerance in strawberry. Inhibition of its activity gave rise to greater cold-induced injury in plant. The FaG6PDH-CY transcript had a significant increase under cold stress, similar to the G6PDH enzyme activity, suggesting a principal participant in response to cold stress. Further study showed that the low-temperature responsiveness (LTR) element in FaG6PDH-CY promoter can promote the gene expression when plant encountered cold stimuli. Besides, FaG6PDH-CY was involved in regulating cold-induced activation of antioxidant enzyme genes (FaSOD, FaCAT, FaAPX and FaGR) and RBOH-dependent ROS generation. The elevated FaG6PDH-CY enhanced ROS-scavenging capability of antioxidant enzymes to suppress ROS excessive accumulation and relieved the oxidative damage, eventually improving the strawberry resistance to cold stress.

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As one of the key enzymes in the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) provides NADPH and plays an important role in plant development and stress responses. However, little information was available about the G6PDH genes in strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa). The recent release of the whole-genome sequence of strawberry allowed us to perform a genome-wide investigation into the organization and expression profiling of strawberry G6PDH genes. In the present study, 19 strawberry G6PDH genes (FaG6PDHs) were identified from the strawberry genome database. They were designated as FaG6PDH1 to FaG6PDH19, respectively, according to the conserved domain of each subfamily and multiple sequence alignment with Arabidopsis. According to their structural and phylogenetic features, the 19 FaG6PDHs were further classified into five types: Cy, P1, P1.1, P2 and PO. The number and location of exons and introns are similar, suggesting that genes of the same type are very similar and are alleles. A cis-element analysis inferred that FaG6PDHs possessed at least one stress-responsive cis-acting element. Expression profiles derived from transcriptome data analysis exhibited distinct expression patterns of FaG6PDHs genes in different developmental stages. Real-time quantitative PCR was used to detect the expression level of five types FaG6PDHs genes and demonstrated that the genes were expressed and responded to multiple abiotic stress and hormonal treatments.