Abstract:To provide an insight into stress defense mechanism of birch leaf pear,a choline monooxygenase gene (PbCMO) was cloned via reverse transcriptase PCR,the rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) and long PCR methods.At the same time,PbCMO sequence characteristics were analyzed by the bioinformatics software.Furthermore,semi quantitative PCR with cross intron primers was adopted to study the expression patterns of PbCMO gene under abiotic stresses.The results showed that:(1)PbCMO cDNA sequence contained a 1 227 bp length coding region which encoded 408 amino acid residues.PbCMO genomic DNA sequence length was 2 928 bp which consisted of 10 exons and 9 introns.Predicted isoelectric point and relative molecular mass of PbCMO were 6.19 and 46.27 kD,respectively.PbCMO encoded polypeptide included Rieske type iron sulfur [2Fe 2S] cluster binding region and the conserved residues of the mononuclear Fe binding motif.Homology analysis showed that the deduced PbCMO protein was highly similar with medlar CMO protein (71%).Phylogenetic analysis also indicated that PbCMO was more related to medlar CMO.(2)PbCMO gene expression was inducible and its transcription abundances climbed up quickly after 100 mmol/L NaCl,10% (W/V) PEG 6000,180 mmol/L mannitol or 20 μmol/L ABA treatment.It is showed that PbCMO expression was response to salt,drought,osmotic and ABA stress.Conclusively,PbCMO was involved in the defense mechanism against abiotic stress in birch leaf pear.