Induced Mutations for Plant Breeding·Agricultural Biotechnology
LIU Jiaxin, WU Dan, TAO Sizheng, LUO Ying, YANG Feng, YU Ting, YANG Youxin, ZHOU Yong
To investigate the role of B-box (BBX) transcription factor in response to Phytophthora capsici infection in pepper, the BBX transcription factor CaBBX2 was cloned and its expression patterns were analyzed using pepper variety 007EA as material in this study. The subcellular localization and bioinformatics analysis of its encoded protein were also performed. The PCR amplification and sequencing results showed that the CDS of CaBBX2 was 639 bp in length, encoding a protein containing 212 amino acids. Physical and chemical analysis indicated that CaBBX2 protein had a molecular weight of 23.5 kDa, pIvalue of 6.17, and GRAVY value of -0.559, suggesting that CaBBX2 is a hydrophilic protein. The protein structure prediction and sequence alignment results revealed that CaBBX2 harbored two conserved B-box domains. Phylogenetic tree analysis showed that CaBBX2 belonged to the group Ⅳ BBXs and was most closely related to Arabidopsis AtBBX18 and AtBBX19. Promoter analysis revealed that the promoter of CaBBX2 contained a number of stress-, hormone-, and light-responsive cis-acting elements. The results of subcellular localization showed that CaBBX2 was located in both the cytoplasm and nucleus. Tissue expression analysis results showed that CaBBX2 was expressed in different pepper tissues, with the highest expression in leaves and the lowest expression in pericarp. Quantitative real-time PCR was used to examine the expression of CaBBX2 under P. capsici infection and MeJA treatment. It was found that the expression of CaBBX2 was increased after P. capsici infection, while its expression displayed a significantly decreased tendency under MeJA treatment. These findings indicated that CaBBX2 may play a key role in hormone-regulated defense response against P. capsici infection, providing an important candidate gene for molecular breeding of pepper disease resistance.