Abstract
A unique protein which was induced in husk of rice strongly under high temperature (in greenhouse) and weakly under low temperature (out-of-doors) was found in a survey with two-dimensional electrophoresis. The N-terminal 16-amino-acid sequence of this rice husk protein (RHP) showed a significant homology with chitinases in other plant species and a complete identity with a peptide deduced from a partial sequence of registered cDNA clone SS2594 in the library of the Rice Genome Research Program, Japan. Thus, the deduced amino-acid sequence for SS2594 was identified as a kind of chitinases. The amino-acid sequence for SS2594 has a unique structure among other chitinases reported for rice. It is concluded that RHP is translated from the gene for SS2594 and a product of a new locus, Chi-4 (S12594) in rice. On the basis of RFLP linkage analysis, the gene Chi-4 was located on chromosome 4.
