[Expression of tobacco SKP1 gene induced by oligochitosan]

Oligochitosan is an effective inductor for plant resistance. To understand the induced resistance mechanism, mRNA differential display was used to isolate genes from Nicotiana tabacum var. Samsun NN and four enhanced-expression gene fragments were obtained and were reamplified. The reamplified products of appropriate size were isolated and purified before they were subcloned into PMD18-T vector. The results of plasmids digestion by EcoRI and HindIII and analysis of reverse Northern blot indicated that the expression of the four genes was enhanced by oligochitosan induction. Sequence and homology analysis show that they share 82% identity in nucleotide sequence with Nicotiana benthamiana SKP1 gene. Because the SKP1 protein as the core component of SCF (ubiquitin ligase enzyme E3) is relevant to plant resistance to virus, so these results suggested that oligochitosan can induce plant resistance and its mechanism may be relevant to ubiquitination.