[Cloning and structure analysis of zinc finger protein gene in Populus euphratica Oliv]

Zinc finger proteins belong to a family of nuclear transcription factors which function is to regulate gene expression in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. A pair of primers was designed after analyzing the conservation of salt-tolerant zinc protein Alfin-1 in such diverse plants as alfalfa and Arabidopsis. The zinc finger protein gene is isolated from total RNA with RT-PCR in aquaculture leaves of Populus euphratica . Its full cDNA length is 924bp. Analysis of its amino acid sequence showed it has a typical Cys(2)/His(2) zinc finger structure and a G-rich promoter binding site GTGGGG, starting from position 556. Since transcrptional factors which have the same function show conservation in structure and amino acid sequence of DNA binding region, the structure analysis in this paper indicates the cloned zinc finger protein gene may have functional correlation to Alfin-1.