Molecular characterisation of RecQ homologues in Arabidopsis thaliana

Molecular characterisation of RecQ homologues in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Members of the RecQ family of DNA helicases are involved in processes linked to DNA replication, DNA recombination and gene silencing. RecQ homologues of various animals have been described recently. Here, for the first time for plants, we characterised cDNAs of all in all six different RecQ-like proteins that are expressed to different extents in Arabidopsis thaliana. Surprisingly, three of th...

Molecular characterisation of two paralogous SPO11 homologues in Arabidopsis thaliana.

The Spo11 protein of yeast has been found to be covalently bound to double-strand breaks in meiosis, demonstrating a unique role of the protein in the formation of these breaks. Homologues of the SPO11 gene have been found in various eukaryotes, indicating that the machinery involved in meiotic recombination is conserved in eukaryotes. Here we report on SPO11 homologues in plants. In contrast t...

Molecular Characterisation of two Putative Photosynthetic Proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana

Photosynthesis is the biological process, by which photosynthetic organisms convert light energy and carbon dioxide into organic compounds. In plants, photosynthesis takes place in the chloroplast, and this organelle evolved from the ancestor of cyanobacteria by endosymbiosis. The chloroplast proteome contains thousands of proteins, of which most are encoded by the nuclear genome. Transcriptome...

Evolutionary, Molecular and Genetic Analyses of Tic22 Homologues in Arabidopsis thaliana Chloroplasts

The Tic22 protein was previously identified in pea as a putative component of the chloroplast protein import apparatus. It is a peripheral protein of the inner envelope membrane, residing in the intermembrane space. In Arabidopsis, there are two Tic22 homologues, termed atTic22-III and atTic22-IV, both of which are predicted to localize in chloroplasts. These two proteins defined clades that ar...

Characterisation of the metacaspase gene family in Arabidopsis thaliana