Clone and Expression of HvFer1 cDNA from Barley

Using maize ferritin ZmFer1 (GenBank accession No.CAA58146) amino acid sequence as a query- ing probe,many highly homologous EST sequences were obtained from GenBank and a putative cDNA se- quence of barley ferritin was assembled.Futhermore,a barley ferritin gene cDNA,named HvFer1 (GenBank accession number EF4403530) was cloned.HvFer1 was 1 023 bp in full length,including 5' untranslated region of 56 bp,3'untranslated region of 202 bp with Poly A,and an open reading frame (ORF) encoding 254 amino acid.Sequence analysis indicated that the protein contained characteristic features of typical ferritin iron- binding regions signature,a ferritin-like diiron domain at the C-terminus.Signal peptide prediction with soft- ware found that HvFer1 included a 27-residue signal peptide with the cleavage site between glycine and serine. Homology analysis showed that the deduced amino acid sequence of HvFer1 shared 56.7%～83.7% identity with ferritins from other plants.Semi-quantity RT-PCR analysis showed that the HvFer1 was expressed univer- sally in barley stems,leaves,immature spikes and roots.The expression profiling also showed that HvFer1 mRNA was up-regulated by drought,salt and iron in barley seedling.