Abstract: A WRKY family gene SlWRKY16 was cloned from cultivated processing tomato（Solanum lycopersicum‘M82’）. The results showed that the open reading frame of SlWRKY16 was obtained from S. lycopersicum，which is 1 497 bp long and encodes 498 amino acids with an estimated molecular weight of 55.5 kD. Alignment of the deduced amino acid sequence of SlWRKY16 with WRKYs from other plant species indicates that SlWRKY16 contains a WRKYGQK conservative domain and a C2H2 zinc finger structure domain，which belongs to class Ⅱb WRKY transcription factor and locates on the plasma membrane. Further phylogenetic tree analysis showed that SlWRKY16 shared a high degree of sequence similarity with SpWRKY6（XP_015064265.1）and StWRKY6（XP_006350473.1）from S. pennellii and S. tuberosum，respectively. Moreover，quantitative RT-PCR analysis indicated that the expression of SlWRKY16 was tissue-specific and significantly decreased and down-regulated under short-term salt and drought stress. In addition，the recombinant strains（pET-30a-SlWRKY16）significantly grew lower than that of the control strain（pET-30a）when being applied with salt or simulated drought（mannitol）stress. Taken together，the above results suggest that SlWRKY16 from S. lycopersicum may have a negative regulatory effect in response to abiotic stress.

Key words: Solanum lycopersicum, SlWRKY16, prokaryotic expression, qRT-PCR, subcellular localization