[The cloning of apple ferritin gene (Apfl) from Malus xiaojinensis Cheng et Jiang and its structure analysis]

The special primers were designed based on the sequence information of plant ferritin genes reported in the literature and used for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with the genomic DNA of Malus xiaojinensis Cheng et Jiang in an attempt to clone apple ferritin gene. A single fragment of 771 bp was successfully obtained from the PCRs and cloned in this study. The sequence and homology analysis results of the fragment showed that the deduced amino acids of the fragment had a ninety-nine percent homology to that of the soybean ferritin gene reported by Lescure et al. (1991). A comparison in details of the nucleotide sequence of the clone and that of the soybean ferritin gene showed that they consisted of the same open reading frame (ORF, 753 bp) and that the cloned fragment had complete initial and stop codes. Within the ORF no introns were found and there were no nucleotide difference in the transit peptide region (TP) of the gene, but five nucleotide mutations were found in the mature peptide region (MP), among which four were synonymous mutations.