Abstract: Based on the conserved sequence of petunia hybrida anthocyain transcriptional activator gene wd40 (an11) and tomato wd40 mRAN (113964R) from GeneBank, the conserved fragment of stwd40 transcriptional activator gene was cloned from the purple potato coat. The 3'-end and 5' -end of this gene were amplified by using RACE technique separately. Sequence analysis show that the nucleotide sequence of this gene is 1292bp, containing a complete open reading frame and encoding 326aa. The stwd40 amino acid sequence is similar to anthocyanin transcriptional activator protein wd40 from large number of species, and the homology is 86% with the petunia hybrida anthocyain transcriptional regulatory gene an11. The results of RT-PCR expression analysis show that stwd40 expressed in the leaves, stems, tuber skins, tuber fleshes and roots of purple potato and the leaves, tuber skins, tuber fleshes of white potato with the different expression levels. It is suggested that the stwd40 is constitutive expressed in potato.

Key words: potato, anthocyanin transcriptional activator gene, clone, RT-PCR