Abstract
Protein nuclear import is basic to all eukaryotic organisms. While this process has been studied extensively in animal and yeast systems, it is only now being addressed in plants. For these studies in plants, it is critical to develop a simple, reliable and sensitive assay to monitor nuclear import. Recently, an assay that involves a histochemical analysis of the enzymatic activity of β-glucuronidase (GUS) fused to a test protein has emerged [3–5, 11, 21, 24, 27].
Are there alternatives to this GUS assay? At least two other approaches have been used in studies of plant nuclear import, E. coli β-galactosidase (lacZ gene) fusions [10] and immunostaining [18, 26]. In contrast to the success of lac fusions in other systems, this approach has proved difficult in plants because of high endogenous β-galactosidase activity in plant cells [12]. In the second approach, plant nuclear import is detected using immunostaining techniques. Although sensitive and specific, this procedure is time-consuming, requiring production of antibodies and processing of the plant material for light or electron microscopy. Presently, therefore, the GUS assay is the most convenient and reliable assay for protein nuclear import in plant cells.
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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Citovsky, V. (1994). Visualizing protein import into the plant cell nucleus. In: Gelvin, S.B., Schilperoort, R.A. (eds) Plant Molecular Biology Manual. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0511-8_35
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0511-8_35
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