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Plant and Cell Physiology Advance Access published online on October 27, 2006
Plant and Cell Physiology, doi:10.1093/pcp/pcl028
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Japanese Society of Plant Physiologists. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Regular paper

RbcX can function as a Rubisco-chaperonin, but is non essential in Synechococcus PCC7942

Daniel Emlyn-Jones 1, Fiona J. Woodger 1, G. Dean Price 1, and Spencer M. Whitney 1 *

1 Molecular Plant Physiology, Research School of Biological Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T. 2601, Australia

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Spencer M. Whitney, E-mail: spencer.whitney{at}.anu.edu.au


  Abstract

In most cyanobacteria the gene rbcX is co-transcribed with the rbcL and rbcS genes that code for the large and small subunits of Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco). Previous co-expression studies in Escherichia coli of cyanobacterial Rubisco and RbcX have identified a chaperonin-like function for RbcX. The organisation of the rbcLXS operon has, to a certain extent, precluded definitive gene-function studies of rbcX in cyanobacteria. In Synechococcus PCC7942 however, rbcX is located >100 kb away from the rbcLS operon providing an opportunity to examine the role of RbcX by insertional inactivation without interference to the Rubisco genes. Fully segregated Synechococcus PCC7942 {triangleup}rbcX::KmR mutants were readily obtained that showed no perturbations in growth rate or Rubisco content and activity. Low amounts of rbcX transcript were detected in Synechococcus PCC7942, however a sensitive antibody raised against purified RbcX failed to detect RbcX expression in cells exposed to different stress treatments. In contrast, co-expression studies of Rubisco assembly in E.coli showed RbcX from Synechococcus PCC7942 and PCC7002 are functionally interchangeable and can stimulate assembly of the PCC7942 and PCC7002 Rubisco subunits. Our results indicate that Rubisco folding and assembly in Synechococcus PCC7942 may have evolved to be independent of RbcX function, apparently in contrast to other {beta}-cyanobacteria. We speculate that divergent evolution of the RbcL sequence may have relaxed a requirement for RbcX function in Synechococcus PCC7942 and propose a new approach for definitively isolating RbcX function in other {beta}-cyanobacteria.

Keywords: Chaperone; Co-expression; Gene function; RbcX; Rubisco; Synechococcus.

This work was funded by the Australian Research Council discovery grant DP0343318. We thank Takuo Onizuka and Akiho Yokota for kindly providing us with an anti-Synechococcus PCC7002 antibody and John Andrews for his contribution to the research. We acknowledge the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute http://www.jgi.doe.gov/ for the use of their Synechococcus PCC7942 genome sequence.


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