Molecular Biology Commons^™

Characterization Of The Putative Xyloglucan Glycosyltransferase Gt14 In Arabidopsis Thaliana, Najam R. Syed

Honors Scholar Theses

Plant cell walls largely consist of matrix polysaccharides that are linked to cellulose microfibrils. Xyloglucan, the primary hemicellulose of the cell wall matrix, consists of a repeating glucose tetramer structure with xylose residues attached to the first three units ('XXXG'). In Arabidopsis thaliana, the core XXXG structure is further modified by enzymatic addition of galactose and fucose residues to the xylose side chains to produce XLXG, XXLG, XLLG and XLFG structures. GT14 is a putative glycosyltransferase in the GT47 gene family. Initial predictions of GT14's hydrophobic regions, based on its translated amino acid sequence, are almost identical to its Arabidopsis …

Reverse Genetic And Cell Biological Approaches To The Study Of Developmental Functions Of Class Xi Myosin In Arabidopsis Thaliana, Eunsook Park

Doctoral Dissertations

Myosin proteins function as molecular motors that drive the ATP-dependent movement of cellular components along actin filaments. Vascular plants encode two different types of myosin, referred to as class VIII and class XI. Although class XI myosins have been suggested to function in organelle movement and cytoplasmic streaming, little is known about their cellular function in detail.

The Arabidopsis genome encodes 13 class XI myosin genes. The reasons for the relatively large number of myosin XI isoforms present within a single plant species are unknown. To investigate the function of these gene products in the cell, we determined the spatial …