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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Functional Analysis Of Moss Class Viii Myosin And Its Role In Plant Cell Division, Shu-Zon Wu
Functional Analysis Of Moss Class Viii Myosin And Its Role In Plant Cell Division, Shu-Zon Wu
Doctoral Dissertations
The moss Physcomitrella patens is a great model system for studying plant gene function using reverse genetic approaches. It undergoes efficient gene-targeting by homologous recombination, allowing the generation of specific gene knockout and tagging a gene at its endogenous locus. Additionally, RNAi is quite effective in P. patens, providing an effective tool for rapid gene silencing and phenotypic characterization. Taking advantage of these features, this dissertation described the establishment of a system to perform an unbiased gene-by-gene RNAi assay to screen for tip growth phenotypes in P. patens. A small set of RNAi constructs were tested, within them …
The Roles Of Myosin Xi And Rop In Moss Tip Growth, Graham M. Burkart
The Roles Of Myosin Xi And Rop In Moss Tip Growth, Graham M. Burkart
Doctoral Dissertations
Because of the large number of myosin XI and ROP genes found in many angiosperms, it has been difficult to determine their precise role with respect to tip growth. In contrast, there are only two myosin XI genes in four ROP genes in the moss Physcomitrella patens. To determine their role in tip growth using a loss-of-function approach, I used RNA interference (RNAi) and found that both of these proteins are essential for tip growth. Consistent with a role in tip growth, I show that a functional, full-length fusion of mEGFP to myosin XI accumulates at a subcortical, apical …