The main goal of the proposed research was to continue the mutual investigations into the molecul... more The main goal of the proposed research was to continue the mutual investigations into the molecular basis of CMS and male fertility restoration [MRF], with the ultimate goal of understanding these phenomena in higher plants. The experiments focused on: (1) dissecting apart the complex CMS - specific mitochondrial S-Pcf locus, in order to distinguish its essential parts which cause sterility from other parts and study its molecular evolution. (2) Studying the expression of the various regions of the S-Pcf locus in fertile and sterile lines and comparing the structure and ultrastructure of sterile and fertile tissues. (3) Determine whether alteration in respiration is genetically associated with CMS. Our mutual investigations further substantiated the association between the S-Pcf locus and CMS by the findings that the fertile phenotype of a population of unstable petunia somatic hybrids which contain the S-Pcf locus, is due to the presence of multiple muclear fertility restoration genes in this group of progenies. The information obtained by our studies indicate that homologous recombination played a major role in the molecular evolution of the S-Pcf locus and the CMS trait and in the generation of mitochondrial mutations in general. Our data suggest that the CMS cytoplasm evolved by introduction of a urs-s containing sublimon into the main mitochondrial genome via homologous recombination. We have also found that the first mutation detected so far in S-Pcf is a consequence of a homologous recombination mechanism involving part of the cox2 coding sequence. In all the cases studied by us, at the molecular level, we found that fusion of two different cells caused mitochondrial DNA recombination followed by sorting out of a specific mtDNA population or sequences. This sequence of events suggested as a mechanism for the generation of novel mitochondrial genomes and the creation of new traits. The present research also provides data concerning the expression of the recombined and complex CMS-specific S-Pcf locus as compared with the expression of additional mitochondrial proteins as well as comparative histological and ultrastructural studies of CMS and fertile Petunia. Evidence is provided for differential localization of mitochondrially encoded proteins in situ at the tissue level. The similar localization patterns of Pcf and atpA may indicate that Pcf product could interfere with the functioning of the mitochondrial ATPase in a tissue undergoing meiosis and microsporogenesis. Studies of respiration in CMS and fertile Petunia lines indicate that they differe in the partitioning of electron transport through the cytochrome oxidase and alternative oxidase pathways. The data indicate that the electron flux through the two oxidase pathways differs between mitochondria from fertile and sterile Petunia lines at certain redox states of the ubiquinone pool. In summary, extensive data concerning the CMS-specific S-Pcf locus of Petunia at the DNA and protein levels as well as information concerning different biochemical activity in CMS as compared to male fertile lines have been accumulated during the three years of this project. In addition, the involvement of the homologous recombination mechanism in the evolution of mt encoded traits is emphasized.
Infectious pathogens are implicated in the etiology of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue ... more Infectious pathogens are implicated in the etiology of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) because of the occurrence of outbreaks of the disease. While a number of different infectious agents have been associated with the onset of ME/CFS, the identity of a specific organism has been difficult to determine in individual cases. The aim of our study is to survey ME/CFS subjects for evidence of an infectious trigger and/or evidence of immune dysregulation via serological testing of plasma samples for antibodies to 122 different pathogen antigens. Immune profiles were compared to age-, sex-, and BMI-matched controls to provide a basis for comparison. Antibody levels to individual antigens surveyed in this study do not implicate any one of the pathogens in ME/CFS, nor do they rule out common pathogens that frequently infect the US population. However, our results revealed sex-based differences in steady-state humoral immunity, both within the ME/CFS cohort and when...
SUMMARYPhotosynthetic inefficiencies limit the productivity and sustainability of crop production... more SUMMARYPhotosynthetic inefficiencies limit the productivity and sustainability of crop production and the resilience of agriculture to future societal and environmental challenges. Rubisco is a key target for improvement as it plays a central role in carbon fixation during photosynthesis and is remarkably inefficient. Introduction of mutations to the chloroplast‐encoded Rubisco large subunit rbcL is of particular interest for improving the catalytic activity and efficiency of the enzyme. However, manipulation of rbcL is hampered by its location in the plastome, with many species recalcitrant to plastome transformation, and by the plastid's efficient repair system, which can prevent effective maintenance of mutations introduced with homologous recombination. Here we present a system where the introduction of a number of silent mutations into rbcL within the model plant Nicotiana tabacum facilitates simplified screening via additional restriction enzyme sites. This system was used...
Dynamic tubular projections emanate from plastids in certain cells of vascular plants and are esp... more Dynamic tubular projections emanate from plastids in certain cells of vascular plants and are especially prevalent in non-photosynthetic cells. Tubules sometimes connect two or more different plastids and can extend over long distances within a cell, observations that suggest that the tubules may function in distribution of molecules within, to and from plastids. In a new application of two-photon excitation (2PE) fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), we separated diffusion of fluorescent molecules from active transport in vivo. We quantified the velocities of diffusion versus active transport of green fluorescent protein (GFP) within plastid tubules and in the cytosol in vivo. GFP moves by 3-dimensional (3-D) diffusion both in the cytosol and plastid tubules, but diffusion in tubules is about 50 times and 100 times slower than in the cytosol and an aqueous solution, respectively. Unexpectedly larger GFP units within plastid tubules exhibited active transport with a velocity ...
Rubisco catalyzes the first step in carbon fixation and has been a strategic target to improve ph... more Rubisco catalyzes the first step in carbon fixation and has been a strategic target to improve photosynthetic efficiency. In plants, Rubisco is a complex made up of eight large subunits encoded by a chloroplast gene, rbcL, and eight small subunits expressed from a nuclear gene family and targeted to chloroplast stroma. Biogenesis of Rubisco in plants requires a chaperonin system composed of Cpn60α, Cpn60β and Cpn20, which helps fold the large subunit, and multiple chaperones including RbcX, Raf1, Raf2 and BSD2, which help the dimerization of the folded large subunits and subsequent assembly with the small subunits into L8S8 holoenzymes. A recent study successfully assembled functional Arabidopsis Rubisco in Escherichia coli by co-expressing the two subunits with Arabidopsis chaperonins and chaperones (Aigner et al., 2017). In this study, we modified the expression vectors used in that study and adapted them to express tobacco Rubisco by replacing the Arabidopsis genes with tobacco o...
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is a disease of enigmatic origin with... more Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is a disease of enigmatic origin with no established cure. Its constellation of symptoms has silently ruined the lives of millions of people around the world. A plethora of hypotheses have been vainly investigated over the past few decades, so that the biological basis of this debilitating condition remains a mystery. In this study, we investigate whether there is a disturbance in homeostasis of metabolic networks in the plasma of a female 32-patient cohort compared to 19 healthy female controls. Extensive analysis of the 832-metabolite dataset generated by Metabolon®, covering eight biological classes, generated important insight into metabolic disruptions that occur in ME/CFS. We report on 14 metabolites with differences in abundance, allowing us to develop a theory of broad redox imbalance in ME/CFS patients, which is consistent with findings of prior work in the ME/CFS field. Moreover, exploration of enrichment analysis...
This project investigated the mechanism by which chloroplasts position themselves to maximize sol... more This project investigated the mechanism by which chloroplasts position themselves to maximize solar energy utilization, to enhance gas exchange, to minimize environmental stress, and to promote efficient exchange of metabolites with other compartments within the plant cell. Chloroplasts move within leaf cells to optimize light levels, moving toward levels of light useful for photosynthesis while moving away from excess light. Plastids sometimes extend their reach by sending out projections (stromules) that can connect anchor chloroplasts in position within the cell or provide close contacts with plasma membrane, mitochondria, peroxisomes, endoplasmic reticulum, and the nucleus. The intracellular location of chloroplasts in relation to other organelles with which they share biosynthetic pathways, such as peroxisomes and mitochondria in photorespiration, affects metabolite flow. This work contributed to the knowledge of the mechanisms of organelle movement and anchoring in specific locations in plant cells and how proteins traffic within the cell. We identified two domains on 12 of the 13 Arabidopsis myosins that were similar to the vacuole-binding (V) domain characterized in yeast and to the DIL domain characterized in yeast and mouse as required for secretory vesicle or melanosome movement, respectively. Because all of the Arabidopsis regions with homology to the V domainmore » contain the amino acid sequence PAL, we refer to this region as the Arabidopsis PAL domain. We have used the yeast Myo2p tail structural information to model the 12 myosin XI tail domains containing the homologous PAL and DIL domains. Eight YFP::DIL domain fusions labeled peroxisomes; none labeled mitochondria or chloroplasts. Six myosin XI Vacuole domains labeled mitochondria and seven labeled Golgi bodies. The Arabidopsis myosin XI-F PAL domain and the homologous myosin XI-F PAL domain from N. benthamiana labels chloroplasts and stromules in N. benthamiana leaves. Using an Arabidopsis line containing hotoconvertible GFP, we observed transfer of protein from one plastid to another and within a stromule from single plastids. We provided time-lapse movies demonstrating movement of both the photoconvertible GFP and standard GFP between plastids. We previously demonstrated the lack of a plastid network within plant cells. We provided protocols explaining how to use fluorescent protein technology to track plastids and stromules within plant cells. We demonstrated that standard GFP unexpectedly could be photoconverted to a red form under certain conditions, allowing the use of GFP lines for studies that require photoconversion.« less
SummaryThe photosynthetic efficiency of C3 plants suffers from the reaction of ribulose 1,5‐bisph... more SummaryThe photosynthetic efficiency of C3 plants suffers from the reaction of ribulose 1,5‐bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) with O2 instead of CO2, leading to the costly process of photorespiration. Increasing the concentration of CO2 around Rubisco is a strategy used by photosynthetic prokaryotes such as cyanobacteria for more efficient incorporation of inorganic carbon. Engineering the cyanobacterial CO2‐concentrating mechanism, the carboxysome, into chloroplasts is an approach to enhance photosynthesis or to compartmentalize other biochemical reactions to confer new capabilities on transgenic plants. We have chosen to explore the possibility of producing β‐carboxysomes from Synechococcus elongatus PCC7942, a model freshwater cyanobacterium. Using the agroinfiltration technique, we have transiently expressed multiple β‐carboxysomal proteins (CcmK2, CcmM, CcmL, CcmO and CcmN) in Nicotiana benthamiana with fusions that target these proteins into chloroplasts, and that p...
A characteristic of CMS mutations in plants, in contrast to the single base changes in human mito... more A characteristic of CMS mutations in plants, in contrast to the single base changes in human mitochondrial mutants (49, 140), is the presence of chimeric genes or chimeric loci; different open reading frames are joined together, or placed in proximal locations and cotranscribed with standard mitochondrial genes. Despite much progress, and the identification of several mitochondrial loci that specify CMS, the molecular basis of this defect is not understood in any plant species. Observations of altered electron transport in Petunia and toxin-mediated membrane disruption in maize plants, bacteria, and yeast expressing the maize urf13 gene product, provide clues to possible mechanisms for disruption of pollen development. Whether disruption in a particular mitochondrial function is at the root of CMS in all species, or whether defects in numerous mitochondrial activities can produce sterility, will only be revealed by further probing of physiological and biochemical defects present in CMS genotypes.
Significance Carbonic anhydrase enzymes located in chloroplast stroma have been hypothesized to f... more Significance Carbonic anhydrase enzymes located in chloroplast stroma have been hypothesized to facilitate photosynthesis in C 3 plants because they catalyze a reaction involving bicarbonate and CO 2 , a substrate of the carbon-fixing enzyme RuBisCO. To test this possibility, tobacco mutants completely lacking chloroplast stromal carbonic anhydrase activity were produced by CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis. The plants displayed normal photosystem II activity and CO 2 assimilation but also abnormal development and increased reactive oxygen species and stromal pH. We conclude that chloroplast carbonic anhydrase does not play a direct role in providing CO 2 for carbon fixation. Instead, as is also true in microorganisms, carbonic anhydrase is necessary to supply bicarbonate for biosynthetic processes.
OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Strong evidence has implicated oxidative stress (OS) as a disease mechanism in ... more OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Strong evidence has implicated oxidative stress (OS) as a disease mechanism in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). The study aim was to assess whether a C>T single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) (rs1800668), which reduces the activity of glutathione peroxidase 1 (GPX1), is associated with brain OS in patients with ME/CFS. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Study population: The study enrolled 20 patients with ME/CFS diagnosed according to Canadian Consensus Criteria, and 11 healthy control (HC) subjects. Genotyping: DNA was extracted from whole blood samples, amplified by PCR, and purified. Sanger sequencing was used for genotyping. 1H MRS: Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H MRS) was used to measure levels of glutathione (GSH)— a primary tissue antioxidant and OS marker— in a 3x3x2 cm3 occipital cortex (OCC) voxel. GSH spectra were recorded in 15 minutes with the standard J-editing technique. The resulting GSH peak area was normalized ...
The main goal of the proposed research was to continue the mutual investigations into the molecul... more The main goal of the proposed research was to continue the mutual investigations into the molecular basis of CMS and male fertility restoration [MRF], with the ultimate goal of understanding these phenomena in higher plants. The experiments focused on: (1) dissecting apart the complex CMS - specific mitochondrial S-Pcf locus, in order to distinguish its essential parts which cause sterility from other parts and study its molecular evolution. (2) Studying the expression of the various regions of the S-Pcf locus in fertile and sterile lines and comparing the structure and ultrastructure of sterile and fertile tissues. (3) Determine whether alteration in respiration is genetically associated with CMS. Our mutual investigations further substantiated the association between the S-Pcf locus and CMS by the findings that the fertile phenotype of a population of unstable petunia somatic hybrids which contain the S-Pcf locus, is due to the presence of multiple muclear fertility restoration genes in this group of progenies. The information obtained by our studies indicate that homologous recombination played a major role in the molecular evolution of the S-Pcf locus and the CMS trait and in the generation of mitochondrial mutations in general. Our data suggest that the CMS cytoplasm evolved by introduction of a urs-s containing sublimon into the main mitochondrial genome via homologous recombination. We have also found that the first mutation detected so far in S-Pcf is a consequence of a homologous recombination mechanism involving part of the cox2 coding sequence. In all the cases studied by us, at the molecular level, we found that fusion of two different cells caused mitochondrial DNA recombination followed by sorting out of a specific mtDNA population or sequences. This sequence of events suggested as a mechanism for the generation of novel mitochondrial genomes and the creation of new traits. The present research also provides data concerning the expression of the recombined and complex CMS-specific S-Pcf locus as compared with the expression of additional mitochondrial proteins as well as comparative histological and ultrastructural studies of CMS and fertile Petunia. Evidence is provided for differential localization of mitochondrially encoded proteins in situ at the tissue level. The similar localization patterns of Pcf and atpA may indicate that Pcf product could interfere with the functioning of the mitochondrial ATPase in a tissue undergoing meiosis and microsporogenesis. Studies of respiration in CMS and fertile Petunia lines indicate that they differe in the partitioning of electron transport through the cytochrome oxidase and alternative oxidase pathways. The data indicate that the electron flux through the two oxidase pathways differs between mitochondria from fertile and sterile Petunia lines at certain redox states of the ubiquinone pool. In summary, extensive data concerning the CMS-specific S-Pcf locus of Petunia at the DNA and protein levels as well as information concerning different biochemical activity in CMS as compared to male fertile lines have been accumulated during the three years of this project. In addition, the involvement of the homologous recombination mechanism in the evolution of mt encoded traits is emphasized.
Infectious pathogens are implicated in the etiology of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue ... more Infectious pathogens are implicated in the etiology of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) because of the occurrence of outbreaks of the disease. While a number of different infectious agents have been associated with the onset of ME/CFS, the identity of a specific organism has been difficult to determine in individual cases. The aim of our study is to survey ME/CFS subjects for evidence of an infectious trigger and/or evidence of immune dysregulation via serological testing of plasma samples for antibodies to 122 different pathogen antigens. Immune profiles were compared to age-, sex-, and BMI-matched controls to provide a basis for comparison. Antibody levels to individual antigens surveyed in this study do not implicate any one of the pathogens in ME/CFS, nor do they rule out common pathogens that frequently infect the US population. However, our results revealed sex-based differences in steady-state humoral immunity, both within the ME/CFS cohort and when...
SUMMARYPhotosynthetic inefficiencies limit the productivity and sustainability of crop production... more SUMMARYPhotosynthetic inefficiencies limit the productivity and sustainability of crop production and the resilience of agriculture to future societal and environmental challenges. Rubisco is a key target for improvement as it plays a central role in carbon fixation during photosynthesis and is remarkably inefficient. Introduction of mutations to the chloroplast‐encoded Rubisco large subunit rbcL is of particular interest for improving the catalytic activity and efficiency of the enzyme. However, manipulation of rbcL is hampered by its location in the plastome, with many species recalcitrant to plastome transformation, and by the plastid's efficient repair system, which can prevent effective maintenance of mutations introduced with homologous recombination. Here we present a system where the introduction of a number of silent mutations into rbcL within the model plant Nicotiana tabacum facilitates simplified screening via additional restriction enzyme sites. This system was used...
Dynamic tubular projections emanate from plastids in certain cells of vascular plants and are esp... more Dynamic tubular projections emanate from plastids in certain cells of vascular plants and are especially prevalent in non-photosynthetic cells. Tubules sometimes connect two or more different plastids and can extend over long distances within a cell, observations that suggest that the tubules may function in distribution of molecules within, to and from plastids. In a new application of two-photon excitation (2PE) fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), we separated diffusion of fluorescent molecules from active transport in vivo. We quantified the velocities of diffusion versus active transport of green fluorescent protein (GFP) within plastid tubules and in the cytosol in vivo. GFP moves by 3-dimensional (3-D) diffusion both in the cytosol and plastid tubules, but diffusion in tubules is about 50 times and 100 times slower than in the cytosol and an aqueous solution, respectively. Unexpectedly larger GFP units within plastid tubules exhibited active transport with a velocity ...
Rubisco catalyzes the first step in carbon fixation and has been a strategic target to improve ph... more Rubisco catalyzes the first step in carbon fixation and has been a strategic target to improve photosynthetic efficiency. In plants, Rubisco is a complex made up of eight large subunits encoded by a chloroplast gene, rbcL, and eight small subunits expressed from a nuclear gene family and targeted to chloroplast stroma. Biogenesis of Rubisco in plants requires a chaperonin system composed of Cpn60α, Cpn60β and Cpn20, which helps fold the large subunit, and multiple chaperones including RbcX, Raf1, Raf2 and BSD2, which help the dimerization of the folded large subunits and subsequent assembly with the small subunits into L8S8 holoenzymes. A recent study successfully assembled functional Arabidopsis Rubisco in Escherichia coli by co-expressing the two subunits with Arabidopsis chaperonins and chaperones (Aigner et al., 2017). In this study, we modified the expression vectors used in that study and adapted them to express tobacco Rubisco by replacing the Arabidopsis genes with tobacco o...
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is a disease of enigmatic origin with... more Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is a disease of enigmatic origin with no established cure. Its constellation of symptoms has silently ruined the lives of millions of people around the world. A plethora of hypotheses have been vainly investigated over the past few decades, so that the biological basis of this debilitating condition remains a mystery. In this study, we investigate whether there is a disturbance in homeostasis of metabolic networks in the plasma of a female 32-patient cohort compared to 19 healthy female controls. Extensive analysis of the 832-metabolite dataset generated by Metabolon®, covering eight biological classes, generated important insight into metabolic disruptions that occur in ME/CFS. We report on 14 metabolites with differences in abundance, allowing us to develop a theory of broad redox imbalance in ME/CFS patients, which is consistent with findings of prior work in the ME/CFS field. Moreover, exploration of enrichment analysis...
This project investigated the mechanism by which chloroplasts position themselves to maximize sol... more This project investigated the mechanism by which chloroplasts position themselves to maximize solar energy utilization, to enhance gas exchange, to minimize environmental stress, and to promote efficient exchange of metabolites with other compartments within the plant cell. Chloroplasts move within leaf cells to optimize light levels, moving toward levels of light useful for photosynthesis while moving away from excess light. Plastids sometimes extend their reach by sending out projections (stromules) that can connect anchor chloroplasts in position within the cell or provide close contacts with plasma membrane, mitochondria, peroxisomes, endoplasmic reticulum, and the nucleus. The intracellular location of chloroplasts in relation to other organelles with which they share biosynthetic pathways, such as peroxisomes and mitochondria in photorespiration, affects metabolite flow. This work contributed to the knowledge of the mechanisms of organelle movement and anchoring in specific locations in plant cells and how proteins traffic within the cell. We identified two domains on 12 of the 13 Arabidopsis myosins that were similar to the vacuole-binding (V) domain characterized in yeast and to the DIL domain characterized in yeast and mouse as required for secretory vesicle or melanosome movement, respectively. Because all of the Arabidopsis regions with homology to the V domainmore » contain the amino acid sequence PAL, we refer to this region as the Arabidopsis PAL domain. We have used the yeast Myo2p tail structural information to model the 12 myosin XI tail domains containing the homologous PAL and DIL domains. Eight YFP::DIL domain fusions labeled peroxisomes; none labeled mitochondria or chloroplasts. Six myosin XI Vacuole domains labeled mitochondria and seven labeled Golgi bodies. The Arabidopsis myosin XI-F PAL domain and the homologous myosin XI-F PAL domain from N. benthamiana labels chloroplasts and stromules in N. benthamiana leaves. Using an Arabidopsis line containing hotoconvertible GFP, we observed transfer of protein from one plastid to another and within a stromule from single plastids. We provided time-lapse movies demonstrating movement of both the photoconvertible GFP and standard GFP between plastids. We previously demonstrated the lack of a plastid network within plant cells. We provided protocols explaining how to use fluorescent protein technology to track plastids and stromules within plant cells. We demonstrated that standard GFP unexpectedly could be photoconverted to a red form under certain conditions, allowing the use of GFP lines for studies that require photoconversion.« less
SummaryThe photosynthetic efficiency of C3 plants suffers from the reaction of ribulose 1,5‐bisph... more SummaryThe photosynthetic efficiency of C3 plants suffers from the reaction of ribulose 1,5‐bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) with O2 instead of CO2, leading to the costly process of photorespiration. Increasing the concentration of CO2 around Rubisco is a strategy used by photosynthetic prokaryotes such as cyanobacteria for more efficient incorporation of inorganic carbon. Engineering the cyanobacterial CO2‐concentrating mechanism, the carboxysome, into chloroplasts is an approach to enhance photosynthesis or to compartmentalize other biochemical reactions to confer new capabilities on transgenic plants. We have chosen to explore the possibility of producing β‐carboxysomes from Synechococcus elongatus PCC7942, a model freshwater cyanobacterium. Using the agroinfiltration technique, we have transiently expressed multiple β‐carboxysomal proteins (CcmK2, CcmM, CcmL, CcmO and CcmN) in Nicotiana benthamiana with fusions that target these proteins into chloroplasts, and that p...
A characteristic of CMS mutations in plants, in contrast to the single base changes in human mito... more A characteristic of CMS mutations in plants, in contrast to the single base changes in human mitochondrial mutants (49, 140), is the presence of chimeric genes or chimeric loci; different open reading frames are joined together, or placed in proximal locations and cotranscribed with standard mitochondrial genes. Despite much progress, and the identification of several mitochondrial loci that specify CMS, the molecular basis of this defect is not understood in any plant species. Observations of altered electron transport in Petunia and toxin-mediated membrane disruption in maize plants, bacteria, and yeast expressing the maize urf13 gene product, provide clues to possible mechanisms for disruption of pollen development. Whether disruption in a particular mitochondrial function is at the root of CMS in all species, or whether defects in numerous mitochondrial activities can produce sterility, will only be revealed by further probing of physiological and biochemical defects present in CMS genotypes.
Significance Carbonic anhydrase enzymes located in chloroplast stroma have been hypothesized to f... more Significance Carbonic anhydrase enzymes located in chloroplast stroma have been hypothesized to facilitate photosynthesis in C 3 plants because they catalyze a reaction involving bicarbonate and CO 2 , a substrate of the carbon-fixing enzyme RuBisCO. To test this possibility, tobacco mutants completely lacking chloroplast stromal carbonic anhydrase activity were produced by CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis. The plants displayed normal photosystem II activity and CO 2 assimilation but also abnormal development and increased reactive oxygen species and stromal pH. We conclude that chloroplast carbonic anhydrase does not play a direct role in providing CO 2 for carbon fixation. Instead, as is also true in microorganisms, carbonic anhydrase is necessary to supply bicarbonate for biosynthetic processes.
OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Strong evidence has implicated oxidative stress (OS) as a disease mechanism in ... more OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Strong evidence has implicated oxidative stress (OS) as a disease mechanism in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). The study aim was to assess whether a C>T single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) (rs1800668), which reduces the activity of glutathione peroxidase 1 (GPX1), is associated with brain OS in patients with ME/CFS. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Study population: The study enrolled 20 patients with ME/CFS diagnosed according to Canadian Consensus Criteria, and 11 healthy control (HC) subjects. Genotyping: DNA was extracted from whole blood samples, amplified by PCR, and purified. Sanger sequencing was used for genotyping. 1H MRS: Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H MRS) was used to measure levels of glutathione (GSH)— a primary tissue antioxidant and OS marker— in a 3x3x2 cm3 occipital cortex (OCC) voxel. GSH spectra were recorded in 15 minutes with the standard J-editing technique. The resulting GSH peak area was normalized ...
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Papers by Maureen Hanson