Cloning and expression analysis of a novel zinc transporter gene from Nasturtium officinale

ABSTRACT

ZIP (Zinc-regulated transporter, Iron-regulated transporter-like Protein, ZIP) plays an important role in uptake or transport Zn or Fe in plants. So studying ZIPs in plant can help to elucidate the molecular mechanism for Zn and Fe transportation. Herein, we have cloned a novel Zn transporter gene NoZIP3 from Nasturtium officinale root using rapid-amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) method, evaluated its function by functional complementation assay and determined its relative transcriptional level by quantitative real-time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (qRT-PCR). The results showed that the full-length cDNA of NoZIP3 was 1029 bp, which encoded a polypeptide of 342 amino acids with a conserved domain of the typical ZIPs. NoZIP3 sequence shared a high similarity (57–89%) with that of other plant species. NoZIP3 could complement a mutant yeast deficient in Zn transportation; however, it could not complement that of Fe transportation. qRT-PCR revealed that the transcriptional level of NoZIP3 in roots was much higher than that in leaves under Zn deficiency, Fe deficiency or sufficient nutrition. These results suggested that NoZIP3 might be preferentially expressed in roots and had roles in Zn transportation, which could provide the foundation for further studying the characteristics and function of this gene.

KEYWORDS:

• Nasturtium officinale
• ZIP gene
• Clone
• RACE
• Functional complementation assay
• Relative transcriptional level
• qRT-PCR

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project (Grant 201903010025) and Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (Grant 2016A010105020). We thank Dr. Eide for giving the mutant yeasts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions

FMH obtained the fund support, designed and supervised the study and wrote the draft. ZQL performed experiment, analysed the data, and did revision and proofreading work. LX performed experiment and analysed the data. LJH finished the structure prediction, phylogenetic analysis and revised the manuscript. DZW helped to finish some experiment and revised the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript. WD helped to do the phylogenetic analysis and revised the manuscript.

Data availability statement

The NoZIP3 sequence was deposited in GenBank of NCBI and assigned the accession number KY660528. This sequence can be accessible with the following link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/KY660528. All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project (Grant 201903010025) and Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (Grant 2016A010105020).