*2.3. Gene and Motif Structure Analyses*

*LEA* genes within the same subfamily showed similar exon and intron architectures (Figure 2, right panel). Further investigation of structures of paired genes at the short-end branches in the phylogenetic tree revealed that six of them (e.g., CsLEA 43–37, 35–25, 2–3, 8–9, 23–34 and 6–7) might have experienced exon-intron gain/loss events during their evolutionary history. Similar situations have been reported for Brassica *LEA* genes [21,33]. In total, 18 motifs were identified in 43 CsLEA proteins (Figure 2, left panel). No motif was found in CsLEA28 protein. Except for LEA\_2 and LEA\_3 subfamily proteins, motif structures and compositions were nearly identical among the proteins in the same subfamily, but differed significantly between the proteins belonging to different subfamilies, implying functional specificities of different CsLEA subfamily proteins [14,34].

**Figure 2.** Motif structure and exon–intron organizations of the 44 CsLEA genes. The 18 motifs discovered in this study are shown on these *CsLEA* genes (**left**). The blue boxes represent exons and the blue lines represent introns (**right**).
