Cloning and expression analysis of <I>ZFP207</I> encoding a TFⅢA-type zinc finger protein in rice

Abstract

The zinc finer proteins consist of a large transcription factor family involved in plant development and responses to environmental stresses. In this paper, a TFA-type zinc finger protein gene ZFP207 (GenBank assession number AK063147.1) was cloned from rice variety Jiucaiqing by RT-PCR approach. This gene contains an open reading frame (ORF) of 567 bp, which encodes a peptide of 188 amino acid residues. The isoelectric point (pI) of the protein is 9.67, and its molecular weight is 20.72 kDa. Bioinformatic analysis showed that the ZFP207 protein comprises a typical TFA-type zinc finger domain and an EAR-motif at its C-terminus. However, nuclear localization signals (NLS) commonly existing in TFA-type zinc finger proteins was not found in the ZFP207 amino acid sequence. In addition, based on the alignments of the whole amino acid sequences of some known TFA-type zinc finger proteins in plants, a phylogenetic tree was con-structed by the neighbour joining method. The phylogenetic tree showed that ZFP207 and other TFA-type zinc finger proteins with single zinc finger domain were grouped into the same branch. The expression pattern of ZFP207 gene was also investigated in various rice tissues at adult stage by RT-PCR and the results showed that ZFP207 was expressed with high levels in culms and leaves, but lower in roots and spikes. Finally, the trans-activation assay in yeast cells revealed that ZFP207 lacked the trans-activation activity.