Carotenoid isomerase(CRTISO)is a key enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of cis-lycopene to alltrans lycopene. In this study, we isolated and characterized the CRTISO gene from Lycium chinense(Lc CRTISO) for the first time. The open reading frame of Lc CRTISO was 1 815 bp encoding a protein of 604 amino acids with a molecular mass of 66.24 k Da. Amino acid sequence analysis revealed that the Lc CRTISO had a high level of similarity to other CRTISO. Phylogenetic analysis displayed that Lc CRTISO kept a closer relationship with the CRTISO of plants than with those of other species. Semi-quantitative PCR analysis indicated that Lc CRTISO gene was expressed in all tissues tested with the highest expression in maturing fruits. The overexpression of Lc CRTISO gene in transgenic tobacco resulted in an increase of total carotenoids in the leaves with β-carotene and lutein being the predominants. The results obtained here clearly suggested that the Lc CRTISO gene was a promising candidate for carotenoid production.
