Chlamydomonas reinhardii gene for the 32 000 mol. wt. protein of photosystem II contains four large introns and is located entirely within the chloroplast inverted repeat

Abstract

The chloroplast psbA gene from the green unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardii has been localized, cloned and sequenced. This gene codes for the rapidly‐labeled 32‐kd protein of photosystem II, also identified as as herbicide‐binding protein. Unlike psbA in higher plants which is found in the large single copy region of the chloroplast genome and is uninterrupted, psbA in C. reinhardii is located entirely within the inverted repeat, hence present in two identical copies per circular chloroplast genome, and contains four large introns. These introns range from 1.1 to 1.8 kb in size and fall into the category of Group I introns. Two of the introns contain open reading frames which are in‐frame with the preceding exon sequences. We present the nucleotide sequence for the C. reinhardii psbA 5′‐and 3′ ‐flanking sequences, the coding region contained in five exons and the deduced amino acid sequence. The algal gene codes for a protein of 352 amino acid residues which is 95% homologous, excluding the last eight amino acid residues, with the higher plant protein.

Isolation of the photosystem II reaction center complex from barley. Characterization by circular dichroism spectroscopy and amino acid sequencing

“…Moreover the size of the isolated peptides was in agreement with the positions of glutamic and aspartic acid residues predicted from the gene sequence. That the barley sequence is so similar to the deduced spinach sequence and that an antibody raised against Chlamydomonas will precipitate an in vitro translated spinach protein supports our proposal in the introduction that Chl~-protein 2 is conserved to the same extent as the D2 and the 32 kD herbicide-binding polypepfide (3,13,15,22,37,50). In this connection it should be mentioned that the isolated peptides were derived from a relatively hydrophilic part of the molecule as judged from the deduced spinach protein sequence.…”

“…The nucleotide sequence of this gene has been determined in a variety of organisms, showing very few differences between cyanobacteria (13), Chlamydomonas (15) and higher plants (50). The sequence of the D2 membrane polypeptide from PSII is also conserved (3,22,37).…”

Light-Intensity-Dependent Expression of Lhc Gene Family Encoding Light-Harvesting Chlorophyll-a/b Proteins of Photosystem II in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

“…Figure 5 also shows the mRNA levels of the CRY1 and psbA genes. The nuclear gene CRY1 encodes the ribosomal protein S14 (Nelson et al, 1994), and psbA is a chloroplast gene encoding the D1 protein of the reaction center of PSII (Erickson et al, 1984). In contrast to the levels of the Lhc mRNAs, those of both the CRY1 and psbA mRNAs were relatively higher under high light than under low light.…”

Transcriptional Analysis of Endogenous and Foreign Genes in Chloroplast Transformants of Chlamydomonas

“…The approximately 930-bp EcoRl restriction fragment, which contains the 3' portion of the chloroplast 16s rRNA gene (Dron et al, 1982b), was cloned into Bluescript vector (Stratagene) to create plasmid pCrcl6SrRNA. The approximately 11 00-bp Hindlll-Kpnl restriction fragment, which contains exon 5 of thepsbA gene (Erickson et al, 1984), was cloned into pUC19 (Vieira and Messing, 1982) to create plasmid pCrcpsbA. The approximately 890-bp Hindlll restriction fragment, which contains an internal portion of the rbcL coding region (Dron et al, 1982a), was cloned into pUCl9 to create plasmid pCrcrbcL.…”