REDUCED CHLOROPLAST COVERAGE genes from Arabidopsis thaliana help to establish the size of the chloroplast compartment.

ABSTRACT: Eukaryotic cells require mechanisms to establish the proportion of cellular volume devoted to particular organelles. These mechanisms are poorly understood. From a screen for plastid-to-nucleus signaling mutants in Arabidopsis thaliana, we cloned a mutant allele of a gene that encodes a protein of unknown function that is homologous to two other Arabidopsis genes of unknown function and to FRIENDLY, which was previously shown to promote the normal distribution of mitochondria in Arabidopsis. In contrast to FRIENDLY, these three homologs of FRIENDLY are found only in photosynthetic organisms. Based on these data, we proposed that FRIENDLY expanded into a small gene family to help regulate the energy metabolism of cells that contain both mitochondria and chloroplasts. Indeed, we found that k

SUBMITTER: Larkin RM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4776492 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature