Plant and Cell Physiology Advance Access published online on January 16, 2008
Plant and Cell Physiology, doi:10.1093/pcp/pcn003
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Significance of zinc in a regulatory protein, CCM1, which regulates the carbon-concentrating mechanism in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
Division of Integrated Life Science, Graduate School of Biostudies, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan
Corresponding author: Hideya Fukuzawa, Graduate School of Biostudies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, 606-8502, Japan, Phone: +81-(0)75-753-6391, FAX: +81-(0)75-753-6127, E-mail: fukuzawa{at}lif.kyoto-u.ac.jp
| Abstract |
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In conditions with the poor availability of inorganic carbon (CO2 and HCO3- :Ci) for photosynthesis, aquatic photosynthetic organisms induce active Ci-uptake systems that allow accumulation of Ci within the cell, the so called carbon-concentrating mechanism (CCM). In an unicellular green algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a regulatory factor CCM1 is indispensable for the regulation of the CCM by sensing CO2 availability. The CCM1 has two putative zinc-binding domains with several conserved Cys and His residues in its N-terminal region. To determine whether the domains actually bind zinc atoms, the N-terminal parts of the CCM1 were expressed as glutathione S-transferase-fusion proteins and subjected to atomic absorption spectrometry. One mole of zinc is bound to one mole of 1-71 and 72-101 amino acid regions of CCM1, respectively. In the case of the site-directed mutant proteins, H54Y, C77V and C80V, the zinc-binding ability was lost. Physiological analyses of the transgenic Chlamydomonas cells harboring mutated Ccm1 gene revealed that amino acid residues such as C36, C41, H54, C77, C80, H90 and C93, were indispensable for induction of the CCM in response to Ci-limiting stress conditions. The size exclusion chromatography followed by immunoblot analyses indicated that CCM1 is present as a protein complex with approximately 290
580 kDa independent of Ci availability.
Keywords: carbon dioxide - zinc - carbon-concentrating mechanism - photosynthesis - signal transduction - carbonic anhydrase
(Received November 22, 2007; Accepted December 27, 2007)
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