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Cloning and characterization of the nuclear gene encoding plastid glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase from the marine red alga Gracilaria verrucosa

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Abstract

The single-copy nuclear gene (GapA), encoding the plastid-localized glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) of the marine red alga Gracilaria verrucosa, has been cloned and sequenced. The GapA transcriptional initiation site was located 49 bp upstream of the start codon, and a putative TATA box was found 54 bp farther upstream. A spliceosomal intron was identified in the transit-peptide-encoding region in a position very similar to intron 1 of GapA and GapB of higher plants; no introns occur in the region encoding the mature protein. These observations provisionally suggest that both red algae and higher plants descend from a single ancestral photosynthetic eukaryote, i.e. that a single endosymbiotic event gave rise to red algal and higher-plant plastids.

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  1. Institute for Marine Biosciences, National Research Council of Canada, 1411 Oxford Street, B3H 3Z1, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Yi-Hong Zhou & Mark A. Ragan

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  1. Yi-Hong Zhou
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Communicated by R. W. Lee

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Zhou, YH., Ragan, M.A. Cloning and characterization of the nuclear gene encoding plastid glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase from the marine red alga Gracilaria verrucosa . Curr Genet 26, 79–86 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00326308

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