Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Molecular Biology Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Molecular Biology

Dynamics Of The Toc Gtpases: Modulation By Nucleotides And Transit Peptides Reveal A Mechanism For Chloroplast Protein Import, Lovett Evan Reddick May 2010

Dynamics Of The Toc Gtpases: Modulation By Nucleotides And Transit Peptides Reveal A Mechanism For Chloroplast Protein Import, Lovett Evan Reddick

Doctoral Dissertations

The chloroplast is the green organelle in the plant cell responsible for harvesting energy from sunlight and converting it into sugars and ATP. Origins of this organelle can be traced back to an endosymbiotic event in which a primitive eukaryotic cell capable of oxidative phosphorylation engulfed a free-living cyanobacterium capable of photosynthetic respiration (1). Immediately following this event the details are not clear, however what is known is that over the course of evolution, the engulfed cyanobacteria relinquished approximately 97% of its protein coding sequences to the host cell nucleus, thus making the newly formed chloroplast reliant on its host …


Determinants For Stop-Transfer And Post-Import Pathways For Protein Targeting To The Chloroplast Inner Envelope Membrane, Antonio A. B. Viana, Ming Li, Danny Schnell Apr 2010

Determinants For Stop-Transfer And Post-Import Pathways For Protein Targeting To The Chloroplast Inner Envelope Membrane, Antonio A. B. Viana, Ming Li, Danny Schnell

Danny Schnell

he inner envelope membrane (IEM) of the chloroplast plays key roles in controlling metabolite transport between the organelle and cytoplasm and is a major site of lipid and membrane synthesis within the organelle. IEM biogenesis requires the import and integration of nucleus-encoded membrane proteins. Previous reports have led to the conclusion that membrane proteins are inserted into the IEM during protein import from the cytoplasm via a stop-transfer mechanism or are completely imported into the stroma and then inserted into the IEM in a post-import mechanism. In this study, we examined the determinants for each pathway by comparing the targeting …