Use of Jaz Degrons in the Study of Protein Function in Physcomitrium patens

Horta, George W.

Student Work

Use of Jaz Degrons in the Study of Protein Function in Physcomitrium patens

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Conditional protein loss-of-function is a valuable tool to investigate the function of proteins whose functions are vital for cell function. Protein-degron fusions have been used successfully in many organisms to achieve conditional loss-of-function. The Jaz degron is based on short sequences from plant proteins degraded when the cell is exposed to methyl-jasmonate. For this MQP, we investigated the effect of fusing Jaz degrons to myosin XI, a protein essential for cell growth in the model plant Physcomitrium patens. We used a complementation system based on two vectors, one for silencing myosin XI by RNAi and a second vector including an RNAi-resistant coding sequence of myosin XI fused to a short sequence hypothesized to function as a “degron.” To test the effect of the degron in the presence of methyl-jasmonate, we first identified concentrations of methyl-jasmonate that had no effect on the growth of untransformed cells. We then tested the effect of these concentrations on plants complemented with the myosin XI-degron. Our results suggest that additional optimizations will be needed because methyl-jasmonate treatment produces non-specific effects when using methods required for transformant selection.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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