Cloning,bioinformatics and expression analysis of ethylene response factor gene of potato

Ethylene response factor(ERF) is a kind of transcription factors(TF) particularly represented in plant,which are involved in plant growth and development,hormone response,disease and insect resistance,and abiotic stress resistance.Primers were designed based on tomato ERF5 gene sequence(NM_001247583.1).The cDNA of potato ERF gene with a total of 789 bp and open reading frame of 732 bp encoding a protein with 243 amino acids was obtained by RT-PCR method.Sequence alignment result showed that there was a similarity of 82% of ERF gene and 70% of amino acid between potato and tomato.The result from BLAST alignment of amino acid sequence of ERF gene demonstrated that a segment of 98~160 bp of amino acid was AP2 domain,and the potato ERF gene belonged to ERF group of EREBP subfamilies of AP2/EREBP transcription factors.Protein tertiary structure prediction indicated that the AP2 domain was much conserved.Fluorescence quantitative PCR analysis of ERF gene showed that it was probably taken part in potato tuber dormancy release and sprouting.