The 32-kDa photosystem II protein of the chloroplast is thought to be a target molecule for the herbicide atrazine. The psbA gene coding for this protein was cloned from Solanum nigrum atrazine-susceptible ('S') and atrazine-resistant ('R') biotypes. The 'S' and 'R' genes are identical in nucleotide sequence except for an A to G transition, predicting a Ser to Gly change at codon 264. The same ...

BACKGROUND DNA barcoding as a tool for species identification has been successful in animals and other organisms, including certain groups of plants. The exploration of this new tool for species identification, particularly in tree species, is very scanty from biodiversity-rich countries like India. rbcL and matK are standard barcode loci while ITS, and trnH-psbA are considered as supplementary...

Medicinal pteridophytes are an important group used in traditional Chinese medicine; however, there is no simple and universal way to differentiate various species of this group by morphological traits. A novel technology termed "DNA barcoding" could discriminate species by a standard DNA sequence with universal primers and sufficient variation. To determine whether DNA barcoding would be effec...

BACKGROUND The chloroplast trnH-psbA spacer region has been proposed as a prime candidate for use in DNA barcoding of plants because of its high substitution rate. However, frequent inversions associated with palindromic sequences within this region have been found in multiple lineages of Angiosperms and may complicate its use as a barcode, especially if they occur within species. METHODOLOGY...

During spinach leaf development, chloroplast-encoded mRNAs accumulate to different steady-state levels. Their relative transcription rates alone, however, cannot account for the changes in mRNA amount. In this study, we examined the importance of mRNA stability for the regulation of plastid mRNA accumulation using an in vivo system to measure mRNA decay in intact leaves by inhibiting transcript...

Plants have been used throughout human history for food and medicine. However, many plants are toxic, and cannot easily be morphologically distinguished from non-toxic plants. DNA identification solves this problem and is widely used. Nonetheless, plant DNA barcode identification faces a number of challenges, and many studies have been conducted to find suitable barcodes. The present study was ...

Heterologous regulatory elements and flanking sequences have been used in chloroplast transformation of several crop species, but their roles and mechanisms have not yet been investigated. Nucleotide sequence identity in the photosystem II protein D1 (psbA) upstream region is 59% across all taxa; similar variation was consistent across all genes and taxa examined. Secondary structure and predic...

The psbA gene codes for the D1 polypeptide of the photosystem II reaction center complex and is found in all photosynthetic organisms that carry out oxygenic photosynthesis. Here we describe the construction and characterization of a strain of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp PCC 6803 in which the three endogenous psbA genes are replaced by a single psbA gene from the chloroplast genome of t...