Abstract
Cardiolipin (CL) is widely distributed in various prokaryotes and eukaryotes as a membrane phospholipid. In eukaryotes, it is localized in inner membrane and contact site of mitochondria. CL is suggested to be involved in many mitochondrial functions. To know physiological roles of CL in higher plants, we identified the Arabidopsis gene CLS encoding a CL synthase and isolated mutants in which the CLS gene is disrupted by T-DNA insertion.
We have analyzed knockout mutants of CLS and found that growth of cls/cls mutants during embryonic stage delayed compared to wild type. Promoter-GUS analysis suggested that AtCLS is expressed especially in embryos, young leaves, colmella cells and guard cells. These findings demonstrate that CLS plays a critical role is plant development.
