Abstract:

To explore the function and expression specificity of photomorphogenic negative regulator FaCOP1 in strawberry（Fragaria × ananassa‘Toyonaka’），the open reading frame（ORF）of FaCOP1 was cloned though homology cloning method and analyzed by bioinformatics. qRT-PCR was used to investigate expression pattern of FaCOP1. Results showed that the ORF of FaCOP1 was 1 989 bp，encoding a putative protein of 662 amino acids with a molecular mass of 74.7187 kD and a pI of 6.54 and GenBank accession number was KX583676. The FaCOP1 protein contained 3 conserved domains including RING，COIL and WD40. Sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis indicated that FaCOP1 is highly conserved in evolution process and different in species. The results of qRT-PCR showed that，FaCOP1 was detected in all analyzed tissues，the highest relative expression level in flowers，followed by leaves and roots and the lowest relative expression in stem and ripe fruit. During fruit development，FaCOP1 was decreasing almost regularly from small green to full red，as opposed to the pattern of anthocyanin accumulation. FaCOP1 could be induced by white，red，blue and mixed light（red︰blue = 1︰1）in leaves and fruit. COP1 played an important role in signal transduction and metabolic pathways while relying on the photomorphogenic positive regulator HY5，but itdid not repress the expression of FaHY5 at the transcriptional level in our study，so their relationship need further verified at the protein level.

Key words: strawberry, FaCOP1, bioinformatics analysis, expression analysis, light quality, photomorphogenesis