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ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #69654
Title: EFFECT OF C-TERMINAL DELETIONS ON RUBISCO ACTIVASE FUNCTION

Author
item Bertoni, Gregory
item PORTIS JR, ARCHIE

Submitted to: Plant Physiology Supplement
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/6/1996
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Rubisco Activase (RA) promotes the activation of ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) in photosynthetic CO2 fixation. Previous work showed that deletion of 18 C-terminal residues of mature spinach RA doubled its ability to activate Rubisco in vitro. Also, the C-terminal domain appears to confer species specificity in chimeric spinach/tobacco RA proteins. For finer analysis, we are using PCR to introduce premature stop codons in the Rca gene in order to create C-terminal deletions of roughly 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 60, or 80 amino acid residues. Preliminary results show that: a) proteins of the appropriate sizes are produced at high levels in E. coli; b) protein from the positive control (delta 0) has normal activity in vitro; c)deleting 11 residues has little effect on activation; d) removing 42 residues changes solubility, suggesting their importance in maintaining tertiary structure. This research was supported, in part by Department of Energy grand number DE-A102-94ER20154.