Abstract:
WRKY transcription factor is a type of transcription factor unique to plants and plays an important role in various physiological processes of plants. This study is based on the transcriptome data of
Atractylodes lancea, the correlation between the FPKM values of the
AlWRKY gene and the
AlTPS gene of Atractylodes lancea was analyzed. Combined with the analysis results, the candidate gene
AlWRKY65 with a significant positive correlation with the expression levels of
AlTPS1 and
AlTPS6 genes and a relatively high FPKM value was screened. The candidate gene was cloned to obtain the open reading frame ORF of the
AlWRKY65 gene, and the related information of its encoded protein was analyzed and the gene expression was studied. The results showed that
AlWRKY65 contains a 681 bp open reading frame and encoding 226 amino acids. Through amino acid sequence homology analysis, it was found that
AlWRKY65 amino acid sequence had high homology with several plants such as
HaWRKY65 and
LsWRKY65; AlWRKY65 protein had a typical WRKYGQK domain, belonging to IIe subgroup of WRKY transcription factor family; phylogenetic analysis indicated that AlWRKY65 protein had the higher homology with CcWRKY65 protein; the expression of
AlWRKY65 gene in different tissues of two producing areas of
Atractylodes lancea were assayed
via real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR, and the results showed that all of them were highly expressed in leaves and also has tissue differences. The expression level of AlWRKY65 gene was down-regulated within 48 h of methyl jasmonate (MeJA) induction; subcellular localization and transcriptional activation assay suggested that
AlWRKY65 was located in the nucleus and had no transcriptional activation activity. This study provides a reference for further elucidating the biological function of
AlWRKY65 in
Atractylodes lancea.