Abstract:
24-Alkyl sterols are the major players in the control of membrane component and plant growth. In this paper, we cloned an important rate-limiting enzyme:sterol-C-24-methyl transferase (SMT) in the sterol biosynthetic pathway according to the transcriptome data of
Tripterygium wilfordii. suspension cells, whose full-length cDNA was 1 631 bp with an open reading frame of 1 080 bp, encoding a protein of 359 amino acids. It was estimated that theoretical isoelectric point (pI) was 6.43 and the molecular mass was 40.0 kDa. Bioinformatics analysis attributed the SMT gene to SMT2 family. The expression vector was constructed as the pMAL-c2x-
TwSMT2 plasmid and the recombinant protein was expressed in E. coil BL21 (DE3) competent cells. After methyl jasmonate treatment, the relative expression level of
TwSMT2 has improved significantly in 24 h. SDS-PAGE electrophoresis and Western Blot showed that protein of TwSMT2 in BL21 (DE3) strain was expressed after induction by IPTG. In this study, TwSMT2 was cloned for the first time and the recombinant protein was expressed, which lay the foundation for elucidation of the sterol biosynthetic pathway of
Tripterygium wilfordii in the future.