Abstract
Ribulose 1, 5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxigenase (RuBisCO) is the key enzyme of photosynthetic carbon assimilation. RuBisCO is composed of eight small subunits (SS) encoded by nuclear gene rbcS and eight large subunits (LS) encoded by chloroplast gene rbcL. In the last year, we reported the transgenic tobacco plants harboring antisense rbcS under the control of dexamethasone (DEX) -inducible promoter (46th annual meeting). In these plants, the amount of endogenous rbcS mRNA can be artificially reduced by induction of antisense rbcS mRNA using DEX treatment. Here, we report the effect of rbcS mRNA reduction on the expression of rbcL gene, the accumulation of RuBisCO and the structure of chloroplast.
