Molecular Cloning and Identification of Genes Encoding Eukaryotic Initiation Factor Family 1 (LceIF1, LceIF1A, and LceIF1B) in Leymus chinensis

Soil salinity has become the most significant a biotic stress, resulting in inhibition of plant growth and even death. To search a novel molecular mechanism involved in salt stress, the translation initiation factors (eIFs) including eIF1, eIF1A, eIF4, and so on, have been found to have potentials to response salt stress. Increased expression has been found particularly in eIF1 and eIF1A, which both play roles in mRNA stabilization and binding of initiator tRNA to the 40S ribosomal subunit to select the translation start site accurately. Although eIF1B has been cloned in human, zebra fish, and other organisms, this gene has not yet cloned and sequenced in plants. In this study, we described molecular cloning of eIF1 family genes including eIF1, eIF1A, and eIF1B, and sequence analysis. LceIF1 and LceIF1A shared a high level of nucleotide sequence identity with relevant gene from other organisms. Due to little available information about eIF1B in plants, LceIF1B was highly different from eIF1B from other animal organisms, with 48% of similarity rate. The difference mainly caused by sequence length that human EIF1B was the longest having 133 amino acids, zebra fish EIF1B showed 113 amino acids, while LcEIF1B only had 58 amino acids. This study provides more sequence sources of eIFs in plants. This would help further understanding of the functions of eIFs in plants when exposure to salt stress.