Abstract: Using parthenocarpic fruit of eggplant（Solanum melongena）harvested seven days after anthesis from line D-10 as material，based on the EST Z569 from eggplant parthenocarpic suppression subtractive hybridization library，a full cDNA（934 bp）was cloned by rapid amplification of cDNA ends（RACE）. The cloned gene was Methionine sulfoxide reductase A（MsrA）gene（SmMsrA），containing an open reading frame（600 bp）and encoding a protein of 199 amino acids. The predicted protein was a member of the peptide methionine sulfoxide reductase（PMSR）superfamily，and contained a conserved sequence GCFWG. The tertiary structure of SmMsrA was similar to the poplar MsrA model（2j89）with a similarity of 67%. Multiple sequence alignments and phylogenetic tree analyses showed that SmMsrA had the highest similarity（92%）with the tomato MsrA（accession number P54153）. The expression of SmMsrA was determined by real-time quantitative RT-PCR during the fruit development of line D-10（parthenocarpic fruits and seeded fruits）and line 03-2（unparthenocarpic fruits and seeded fruits）. The result showed that the SmMsrA gene was expressed throughout eggplant fruit development in different cultivars，and in parthenocarpic ovaries the highest expression was at anthesis day and under suboptimal temperatures.

Key words: eggplant, Solanum melongena, parthenocarpy, methionine sulfoxide reductase, expression analysis