Isolation, Characterization, and Expression Profiling of Nucleoside Diphosphate Kinase Gene from Tall Fescue (Festuca arundinaceous Schreb.) (FaNDPK) under Salt Stress

Fifty tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) half-sib families were screened under salinity stress during germination stage, and five tolerant and five sensitive half-sib families were selected. After studying morphological and biochemical characteristics of 10 selected families, the most salt-tolerant family was used for gene expression analysis. Real-time PCR analysis showed that the NDPK expression in plants treated by 200-mM sodium chloride has increased 36.782-fold greater than that in the control ones. The full length of encoding region of NDPK in tall fescue was obtained using the rapid amplification of cDNA ends technique. The homology comparison of DNA sequences, deduced amino acid sequences, and protein sequences were carried out using CLASTALW program in NCBI. The fragment composed of 822 nucleotides (gene's ORF was 508 nucleotides), and corresponding protein consist 168 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of 19.4 kD. Blast search for isolated fragment showed that our sequenced fragment is highly similar to UMP/CMP kinase of Oryza sativa japonica (95%). In Blastp, the amino acid sequence of isolated fragment was similar to UMP/CMP kinase of Sorghum bicolor (95%). The results of study confirm that the NDPK is related to UMP/CMP kinase.