*4.1. Genome-Wide Identification of MAPK Genes in Kiwifruit*

For identification of the *MAPK* gene family, the sequences of *Arabidopsis* MAPK cascade proteins were obtained from TA˙IR (https://www.arabidopsis.org/). The MAPK protein sequences of grapevine were obtained from the *V. vinifera* proteome 12× database (http://www.genoscope.cns.fr/ externe/GenomeBrowser/Vitis/). Kiwifruit (*A. chinensis*) assembly and annotation were downloaded from kiwifruit genome database (http://bioinfo.bti.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/kiwi/download.cgi). These sequences were used as queries to search against the kiwifruit protein databases by the BLASTP program with an e-value of 1 × e <sup>−</sup><sup>50</sup> as the threshold. The local Hidden Markov Model-based searches (HMMER: http://hmmer.janelia.org/), built from all the known MAPK protein sequences from *Arabidopsis* and grapevine, were used to identify the *MAPK* genes in kiwifruit. To identify predicted *AcMAPK* genes accurately from genome sequences, the unique sequences obtained from the above-mentioned programs were further filtered based on the typical structural features of plant MAPK proteins as previously reported [1,13]. The *AcMAPK* genes were accepted only if they contained the essential TDY or TEY signature motif and the 11 conserved subdomains.
