A photosynthetic mutant of Arabidopsis thaliana, hcf5, was isolated by screening M, seedlings for high chlorophyll fluorescence. Thylakoid morphology was strikingly abnormal, with large grana stacks and almost no stroma lamellae. Fluorescence induction kinetics, activity assays, and immunoblotting showed that photosystem II was absent. Polypeptides of the photosystem I complex, the Cyt b d f complex, coupling factor, and the large subunit of ribulose-1,s-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase were also severely depleted. However, the nuclear-encoded chlorophyll a/b lightharvesting complex polypeptides were unaffected. The rbcL transcript was present at very low levels, the pattern of transcripts from the polycistronic psbB-psbH-petB-petD operon was abnormal, and the mature psbH message was almost completely lacking. This suggests that the hcf5 locus may encode a product required for the correct expression of several chloroplast genes.
The nuclear photosynthetic mutant, hcf2, of Arabidopsis thaliana was isolated by screening M2 seedlings for abnormally-high chlorophyll fluorescence (hcf), indicative of a block in photosynthetic electron transport. Fluorescence induction kinetics, photosynthetic electron transport activity assays and immunoblotting revealed that all the complexes involved in photosynthetic electron transport were affected to some extent. The most striking effect of the mutation was on the relative steady state levels of the petA transcript (encoding the apoprotein of cytochrome f) which were more than five-times higher in the mutant plants than in their wild-type siblings.
The major beta-glucosidase isozyme Glu1 is encoded by a highly polymorphic gene (glu1) in maize. The glu1 gene comprises 12 exons and 11 introns. Two of these introns, introns 4 and 10, show insertional polymorphism: those in allele glu1-1 (represented by inbred line OH7B) are longer than those in other inbred genotypes and in two teosintes (Zea mexicana and Zea parviglumis) surveyed. Sequence data revealed that an increase in the length of intron 4 from 150 to 477 bp in OH7B is due to a short (11 bp) tandem duplication and a large insertion sequence of 313 bp plus a 4-bp (5' ATAG 3') direct repeat. The 313-bp insertion sequence (referred to as mzsTn-1) has all the features of a transposon, having a 25-bp well-conserved (3/25 mismatches) inverted repeat sequence at its termini flanked by a 4-bp direct repeat. The increase in length from 1041 to 1302 bp in intron 10 of OH7B is due to a 259-bp insertion sequence (referred to as mzsTn-2) plus a 2-bp (5' TA 3') direct repeat. The mzsTn-2 element also possesses all the hallmarks of a transposon: a 34-bp well-conserved (3/34 mismatches) inverted repeat sequence at its termini flanked by a 2-bp direct repeat. The mzsTn-1 element belongs to a new family of inverted repeat elements, while mzsTn-2 belongs to the Stowaway family of inverted repeat elements. Analysis of PCR products from amplifications off genomic-DNA templates, using primers derived from the inverted repeat termini, and Southern blotting data suggest that both small transposons are members of a multigene family. The occurrence of two different small transposons in introns of the same glu1 allele in inbred OH7B and their absence in other genotypes suggest that they have moved into this glu1 allele recently through mediation of their autonomous counterparts that are active in OH7B or in its ancestry.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.