*Article* **Genome-Wide Identification and Characterization of** *Hsf* **and** *Hsp* **Gene Families and Gene Expression Analysis under Heat Stress in Eggplant (***Solanum melongema* **L.)**

**Chao Gong 1,†, Qiangqiang Pang 1,2,3,†, Zhiliang Li 1, Zhenxing Li 1, Riyuan Chen 2, Guangwen Sun 2,\* and Baojuan Sun 1,\***


**Abstract:** Under high temperature stress, a large number of proteins in plant cells will be denatured and inactivated. Meanwhile Hsfs and Hsps will be quickly induced to remove denatured proteins, so as to avoid programmed cell death, thus enhancing the thermotolerance of plants. Here, a comprehensive identification and analysis of the *Hsf* and *Hsp* gene families in eggplant under heat stress was performed. A total of 24 *Hsf*-like genes and 117 *Hsp*-like genes were identified from the eggplant genome using the interolog from Arabidopsis. The gene structure and motif composition of *Hsf* and *Hsp* genes were relatively conserved in each subfamily in eggplant. RNA-seq data and qRT-PCR analysis showed that the expressions of most eggplant *Hsf* and *Hsp* genes were increased upon exposure to heat stress, especially in thermotolerant line. The comprehensive analysis indicated that different sets of *SmHsps* genes were involved downstream of particular *SmHsfs* genes. These results provided a basis for revealing the roles of *SmHsps* and *SmHsp* for thermotolerance in eggplant, which may potentially be useful for understanding the thermotolerance mechanism involving *SmHsps* and *SmHsp* in eggplant.

**Keywords:** eggplant; heat shock factor (Hsf); heat shock protein (Hsp); heat stress; thermotolerance
