Abstract
Aquatic photosynthetic organisms, including unicellular green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, induce a carbon-concentrating mechanism (CCM) under limiting-CO2 conditions in light. In Chlamydomonas, CCM is controlled by a gene Ccm1/Cia5, which encodes a zinc-containing soluble protein CCM1/CIA5. The ccm1 mutant cannot induce 51 genes under low-CO2 (LC: aerated air containing 0.04% CO2) condition. The cDNA array experiments revealed that the levels of 38 different transcripts were up-regulated under conditions that induces CCM but not under other conditions. In order to identify other CCM-related genes that had not been spotted on the cDNA array, transcriptome analyses were carried out by massive sequencing technique using Genome Analyzer IIx (Illumina). The mRNA samples extracted from wild type and mutant cells were reverse-transcribed and used for RNA-seq analysis by using GA IIx, in which 36-nucleotides (nt) of sequences were determined and they were analyzed using Kyoto Chlamydomonas Genome Database (KCGD http://chlamy.pmb.lif.kyoto-u.ac.jp/). Newly identified CCM-related genes will be discussed.
