The arcA, a member of the G protein beta-subunit family, was isolated from tobacco BY-2 cells as an auxin-responsive gene. Characterization of arcA, which should help to elucidate the function of the gene product in the plant cells, was performed with emphasis on the mode of expression and the analysis of its promoter. Accumulation of the arcA message was detected only after treatments with aux...

Cotton leaf curl Burewala virus (CLCuBuV), belonging to the genus Begomovirus, possesses single-stranded monopartite DNA genome. The bidirectional promoters representing Rep and coat protein (CP) genes of CLCuBuV were characterized and their efficacy was assayed. Rep and CP promoters of CLCuBuV and 35S promoter of Cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) were fused with β-glucuronidase (GUS) and green f...

Human mucopolysaccharidosis VII (MPS VII, Sly syndrome) results from a deficiency of beta-glucuronidase (GUS) and has been associated with a wide range in severity of clinical manifestations. To study missense mutant models of murine MPS VII with phenotypes of varying severity, we used targeted mutagenesis to produce E536A and E536Q, corresponding to active-site nucleophile replacements E540A a...

Expression of the Arabidopsis acidic chitinase promoter was investigated during plant development and in response to inoculation with fungal pathogens. A chimeric gene composed of 1129 bp of 5[prime] upstream sequence from the acidic chitinase gene was fused to the [beta]-glucuronidase (GUS) coding region and used to transform Arabidopsis and tomato. Promoter activity was monitored by histochem...

Effective preharvest strategies to eliminate aflatoxin accumulation in crops are not presently available. The molecular biology of aflatoxin biosynthesis has been extensively studied, and genetic and molecular tools such as reporter gene systems for the measurement of fungal growth have been developed. A reporter construct containing the Aspergillus flavus beta-tubulin gene promoter fused to Es...

Expression analyses of genes encoding sulfur-rich 10 kDa rice prolamins have not been reported to date although the entire genome of the model monocot plant has been sequenced in recent years. We isolated a 10 kDa rice prolamin gene, RP10, by genomic PCR, and the gene was registered in GenBank under the accession number AF294580. Genomic Southern-blot and bioinformatic study revealed that genes...

The synthetic transcription factor LhG4 has been used in numerous mis-expression studies in plants. We show that the sequence encoding the LhG4 activation domain, derived from Saccharomyces cerevisiae GAL4, contains several cryptic polyadenylation signals in Arabidopsis. The GAL4-derived sequence was modified according to preferred Arabidopsis codon usage, generating LhG4AtO which was faithfull...

Human β-glucuronidase (GUS) cleaves β-D-glucuronic acid residues from the non-reducing termini of glycosaminoglycan and its deficiency leads to mucopolysaccharidosis type VII (MPSVII). Here we report a high resolution crystal structure of human GUS at 1.7 Å resolution and present an extensive analysis of the structural features, unifying recent findings in the field of lysosome targeting and gl...

A series of transposons are described which contain the gusA gene, encoding beta-glucuronidase (GUS), expressed from a variety of promoters, both regulated and constitutive. The regulated promoters include the tac promoter which can be induced by IPTG, and nifH promoters which are symbiotically activated in legume nodules. One transposon contains gusA with a strong Shine-Dalgarno translation in...

The involvement of regions located upstream of the translation start site in the expression of two Arabidopsis thaliana nuclear COX5c genes encoding subunit 5c of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase has been analysed. It was observed that these regions, which include a leader intron, direct the tissue-specific expression of the gus reporter gene, mainly in root and shoot meristems, actively grow...