NtCDPK12, a gene encoding calcium-dependent protein kinase, was induced by high-salt and drought in Nicotiana tabacum
Calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs, EC 2.7.1.37) are the crucial Ser/Thr protein kinases in plants and play an important role in plant Ca2+ signal transduction. A full-length CDPK gene, NtCDPK12 (GenBank accession no. GQ337420), was isolated from common tobacco ( Nicotiana tabacum ) leaves by rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE). The NtCDPK12 cDNA is 1816 bp long and contains an open reading frame (ORF) of 1461 bp encoding 486 amino acids. Sequence alignments indicated that NtCDPK12 contains all conserved regions found in CDPKs and shows a high level of sequence similarity to many other plant CDPKs. The results of real-time quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR) showed that NtCDPK12 was highly expressed in stems and increased in roots treated with high-salt or subjected to drought stress, which indicated that NtCDPK12 was induced by high-salt and drought stresses.