Isolation of phytochrome homologous genes from hemiparasitic plant, Striga hermonthica and analysis of its photoresponces

Abstract

We focus on parasitic plants, which lost photosynthetic abilities after had become parasitic in the process of evolution. New insights into the light signal transduction of plants will be obtained by clarifying differences of light signal transduction pathways between parasitic plants and photosynthetic plants. So far we isolated a phytochrome gene in Orobanche minor, which doesn't do photosynthesis at all, and we analyzed functions of the gene. In this study, we focuse on another parasitic plant, Striga hermonthica, which is a closely related species of O. minor but still keeps photosynthetic ability. Relationship between functions of phytochrome and its amino acid sequence will be more clear by comparison of related photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic species. Therefore we isolated phytochrome A and B homologous genes in S. hermonthica. We are verifing photoresponses of S. hermonthica now.