Characterization of Arabidopsis mutants deficient in alkaline-neutral invertases

QUIÑONES A; COHEN S; SALERNO, GL; EDUARDO JULIAN ZABALETA; MARTIN ML

Puerto Madryn

Congreso; XLVI Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2010

Characterization of Arabidopsis mutants deficient in alkaline-neutral invertases. Quiñones, Adrianaa; Cohen, Stefaniaa; Salerno, Gracielaa; Zabaleta, Eduardob and Martin, Marianaa aCIB, FIBA, Mar del Plata, Argentina-CEBB-MdP, CONICET, Argentina. bIIB, FCEyN, UNMdP, Mar del Plata, Argentina Invertases (Invs) catalyze the irreversible hydrolysis of sucrose into hexoses and play an important role when a demand of carbon and energy occurs. Moreover, it has become evident thatsucrose and their hydrolysis products are important metabolic signals that modulate gene expression and regulate plant development. Alkaline-neutral invertases (A/N-Invs) are one of the two classes of invertase activities with a characteristic optimum pH between 6.5–8.0. The physiological functions of A/N-Invs are not clear yet. A/N-Invs are distributed between the cytosol and different subcellular locations suggesting different physiological functions. In this work, we focus on two potentially mitochondrial A/N-Invs in Arabidopsis (At-INVA and At-INVC). To explore their possible biological roles we analyzed At-a/n-inva and At-a/n-invc knockout mutant plants.Lack of At-A/N-INVA and At-A/N-INVC expression inhomozygous mutant plants was verified by RT-PCR assays. Phenotype characteristics were analyzed for both mutants. Moreover, knockout plants display a lower total A/N-Inv activity compared to wild-type plants. Possible functional roles of alkaline/neutral invertases in mitochondriawill be discussed.