Diacylglycerol acyltransferase （DGAT） is the key enzyme that catalyzes the triacylglycerol biosynthesis. The comparative analysis was performed on the DGAT1 genes of cotton and other model plants. Sequence analysis showed that most of the DGAT1 genes,with high variation of intron length and high conservation of intron phrase,from the cotton and other model plants had 16 exons. Additionally, 7 conserved motifs were present in these DGAT1 proteins. The core motifs were overlapped with the functional domain of DGAT1 protein. Phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that gene tree was highly consistent to species tree,suggesting that the evolutionary history of species was revealed by gene tree. There was single copy of DGAT1 gene in cotton,but at least two duplicated DGAT1 genes were iden- tified in rice,maize,poplar and moss genomes. The selective pressure analysis showed that the PtDGATla/PtDGATlb was under positive selection,but other four pairs of homologous genes were under negative selection. 17 positively selected sites were identified at subgroup level （P〉0.05）,suggesting these subgroups under relaxed functional constraint. The findings provide a basis for further studying func- tion and evolution of DGAT1 genes in cotton and other model plants.
