Abstract
Higher plant chloroplast division involves some of the same types of proteins that are required in prokaryotic cell division. These include two of the three Min proteins, MinD and MinE, encoded by the min operon in bacteria. Noticeably absent from annotated sequences from higher plants is a MinC homologue. A higher plant functional MinC homologue that would interfere with FtsZ polymerization, has yet to be identified. We sought to determine whether expression of the bacterial MinC in higher plants could affect chloroplast division. The Escherichia coli minC (EcMinC) gene was isolated and inserted behind the Arabidopsis thaliana RbcS transit peptide sequence for chloroplast targeting. This TP-EcMinC gene driven by the CaMV 35S2 constitutive promoter was then transformed into tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.). Abnormally large chloroplasts were observed in the transgenic plants suggesting that overexpression of the E. coli MinC perturbed higher plant chloroplast division.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Dr. Joe Lutkenhaus and Dr. Robert Houtz for antisera to E. coli MinC and the large subunit of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase proteins, respectively; Mellisa Dawdry, Dr. Nihar Nayak and Praveen Pallikonda for technical assistance; Drs. Saratha Kumudini, Archie Portis and Ling Yuan for critical reviews of the manuscript.
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Communicated by K. Kamo
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Tavva, V.S., Collins, G.B. & Dinkins, R.D. Targeted overexpression of the Escherichia coli MinC protein in higher plants results in abnormal chloroplasts. Plant Cell Rep 25, 341–348 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-005-0086-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-005-0086-1