Identification and characterization of chloroplast division defective Arabidopsis FOX mutant

Abstract

Chloroplast division is driven by both prokaryotic component and eukaryotic component. At present, several factor such as the FtsZ and Dynamin have found, however, more of unidentified factors are required for chloroplast division event. In this study, we isolated a mutant of Arabidopsis with altered chloroplast number and size from the FOX hunting transgenic lines and identified the overexpressed cDNA in this FOX line. This cDNA encoded putative plastid protein possesses three transmembrane domains. This protein is conserved from prokaryotes including cyanobacteria to plants and malarian parasites. We currently are analyzing the localization in chloroplast using GFP fused protein and T-DNA insertion line.