Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni) accumulates highly sweet steviol glycosides (SGs) specially in leaves. The gene expression analysis in this plant has mainly focused on the genes directly involved in the biosynthetic pathways of SGs. Here we analyzed C2H2 zinc finger protein (C2H2-ZFP) gene family, a group of well-known transcription factors that involves in various developmental, physiological and biochemical activities as well as in response to abiotic stresses. We identified a total of 185 putative SrC2H2-ZF proteins from the recently assembled genome sequence of S. rebaudiana. We further characterized the identified C2H2-ZF domains and their organization, additional domains and motifs and analyzed their biochemical properties, localization and gene expression patterns. Our analysis showed that roughly, half of the identified SrC2H2-ZFs are interactively expressed in different tissues and developmental stages. Furthermore, real-time PCR revealed the differential expression of three C2H2-ZFP genes under drought stress.
