*4.5. Cloning and Protein Sequences Analysis of EXO70 Genes from Haynaldia villosa*

According to the sequences obtained from the database of *H. vulgare*, primers (Table S3) for cloning the full-length cDNA of the *EXO70* gene from *Haynaldia villosa* were designed with online software Primer3 designing tool (v. 0.4.0, University of California, USA) [84] (Table S3). Mixed root, stem and leaf tissue cDNA of *H. villosa* served as a template for the isolation. This was performed at 95 ◦C for 30 s, followed by 35 cycles of 95 ◦C for 15 s, 58 ◦C for 15 s or 30 s and 72 ◦C for 3 min and then by 5 min at 72 ◦C in Phanta Max Super-Fidelity DNA polymerase (Vazyme, Nanjing, China). Before subcloning into their destination vectors, the PCR-amplified cDNA products were first cloned into the *pTOPO-Blunt* Vector (Aidlab, Beijing, China) as per the manufacturer's instructions. Multiple sequence alignments were conducted using DNAMan (Lynnon Corporation, Quebec, QC, Canada) software. The sequences similarity was visualized using the R programming language.
