Ruifen Sun , Yanfang Zhang , Shuchun Guo , Haifeng Yu , Suping Li , Hui Nie , Yulin An

Inner Mongolia Academy of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Sciences, Huhhot, 010031, China
Author    Correspondence author
Molecular Plant Breeding, 2021, Vol. 12, No. 21   doi: 10.5376/mpb.2021.12.0021
Received: 29 Jun., 2021    Accepted: 08 Jul., 2021    Published: 15 Jul., 2021

This article was first published in Molecular Plant Breeding in Chinese, and here was authorized to translate and publish the paper in English under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Sun R.F., Zhang Y.F., Guo S.C., Yu H.F., Li S.P., Nie H., and An Y.L., 2021, Cloning and expression analysis of a salt-stress-induced HD-Zip transcription factor HB-12 from sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.), Molecular Plant Breeding, 12(21): 1-13 (doi: 10.5376/mpb.2021.12.0021)

HB transcription factor genes play a significant role in plant growth and development, including response to biotic and abiotic stresses. In this study, an HD-Zip transcription factor HB-12 was cloned from sunflower using SMARTer RACE technology based on Unigene551_All known sequence. The full-length HB-12cDNA sequence is 821 bp, including 573 bp open reading frame and encoding 190 amino acids. The predicted protein molecular weight and isoelectric point are 22.55 kD and 5.58, respectively, with a homeobox domain (HD) and a homeobox-associated leucine zipper domain (HALZ). HB-12 belongs to the sunflower HD-Zip I subfamily proteins. The GenBank sequence accession number is KU315052. HB-12 protein does not exist in the transmembrane domain, and its subcellular localization predicted that it might be in the nucleus. Cluster analysis revealed that the sunflower HB-12 is closely related to the HB-12 of potato and tomato crops. Genomic DNA sequence corresponding to the full-length cDNA of HB-12 was amplified using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The full length of the coding region is 652 bp, and two exons are separated by one intron. The sequence has been submitted to GenBank (Accession No. KU315053). Real-time PCR analysis showed that HB-12 expression was induced by salt, abscisic acid (ABA), and polyethylene glycol (PEG) and varied in different organs, such as roots, hypocotyls, and leaves. This study lays a foundation for research in molecular breeding of sunflower.

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.); HB-12; HD-Zip; Stress; Expression analysis