Authors: JunJun Liu Abul K M Ekramoddoullah Doug Taylor Nina Piggott Summer Lane Barbara Hawkins
Publish Date: 2004/05/28
Volume: 18, Issue: 6, Pages: 649-657
Abstract
Four protein bands of 38 34 32 and 25 kDa designated as Picg5a to Picg5d were detected specifically with an antibody against a putative PR10 protein Picg1 in Picea glauca The Picg5 proteins accumulated during cold acclimation in foliage and roots and showed polymorphism in the population Only one Picg5 protein was expressed in each individual seedling The Picg5 protein levels were positively correlated with freezing tolerance R2=06 P0001 Two types of cDNA clones designated as Picg51 and Picg52 were characterized after screening an expressed cDNA library with antiPicg1 antibody Compared to Picg51 Picg52 has a deletion of 123 nucleotides in the coding region Picg51 and Picg52 shared 97–98 identity on the nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequence levels Southern blot analysis suggested one or two copies of the Picg5 gene within the P glauca genome Recombinant proteins by expressing Picg5 cDNAs in Escherichia coli had the same antigenic binding property and molecular masses of natural proteins suggesting that they encode Picg5 proteins The amino acid sequence deduced from Picg5 cDNAs consisted of five or six copy repeat segments termed QKA segments A BLASTP search of GenBank data revealed that the Picg5 proteins were novel ones only two QKA segments showing low similarity with the Ksegment of both dehydrin and rehydrin Like protein accumulation the Picg5 transcripts were upregulated during cold acclimation The expression pattern and unique features of protein structure suggest that the Picg5 proteins may have a function related to cold stressThis research was funded by CFSCanadian Biotechnology Strategy Fund awarded to AKME SL was supported by the Government of Canada Youth Internship Program The authors thank Ms N Mattheus and Dr SP Lee for their generous gift of the white spruce cDNA library Ms M Deslauries and Dr J Beaulieu CFSQuebec for supplying white spruce samples and Dr TJ Close University of California Riverside for providing the antibody against Ksegment of dehydrin
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