Bioinformatics analysis and Late Blight resistance identification of zinc finger protein gene StZFP16

Abstract Late blight is the most notorious oomycete disease in potato production. Qingshu 9 has been the leading potato cultivar Qingshu 9 in China, which showed excellent field performance against late blight in different regions and multiple years. Based on the transcriptome data of the interaction between Qingshu9 and late blight in the early stage of the research group, zinc finger protein genes plays a critical role in interaction between late blight and Qingshu9. In this study, a novel gene, StZFP16 was cloned from Qingshu 9. The total length of StZFP16 is 1107 bp, and it encodes 369 amino acid polypeptides. The StZFP16 was induced by SA and MeJA to express. An overexpression vector of StZFP16 was constructed and transiently transformed into the model plant Nicotiana benthamiana. And the results showed that StZFP16 gene enhances plant resistance to late blight by mediating H2O2 content, antioxidant enzyme activity and the expression of related defense genes. These results indicated that StZFP16 enhanced potato resistance to P. infestans, providing a vital theoretical basis for analyzing the functional diversity of zinc finger protein family genes and the effective utilization of Qingshu 9 in disease resistance breeding.