Abstract: Farnesyl diphosphate synthase (FPS) is a key enzyme in isoprenoid biosynthesis, participates in the synthesis of methyl farnesoate (MF) in the crustaceans. To study the regulatory role of FPS during ovarian development of the crustaceans, a full-length of fps (Ptfps, GeneBank accession number: KM013803) was cloned from Portunus trituberculatus by RT-PCR and rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE). The full-length of Ptfps was 2 360 bp and it contained an open reading frame (ORF) of 1 290 bp encoding a protein of 429 amino acid residues. Bioinformatics analysis found that PtFPS has seven prenyltransferase conserved regions, and exhibits the highest identity (58%) with FPS of Zootermopsis nevadensis. Quantitative real-time PCR analysis results showed that fps was mainly expressed in mandibular organ (MO), and the expression level was much higher than that in other tissues (P < 0.01). During the first ovarian development, the expression of fps significantly increased to the highest levels at stage Ⅳ (P < 0.05), and then slightly declined; During the second ovarian development, the expression of fps significantly increased to the highest level at stage Ⅲ (P < 0.05), and reached to the maximum at stage Ⅳ. The above results indicated that fps may closely related to the regulation of ovarian development in P. trituberculatus.

Key words: Portunus trituberculatus, farnesyl diphosphate synthase (FPS), gene cloning, ovarian development, expression