Abstract
To understand the function of new nuclear-encoded chloroplast genes, we isolated the albino mutants (apg11 and apg12) in Ac/Ds transposon tag lines. At this conference, we would like to report about APG11 and APG12. APG11 and APG12 did not have any specific domains and motifs and were only similar to some proteins in higher plants. The amino acid sequence of both proteins were similar each other. The sequence of APG11 showed 51% identity and 65% similarity with the APG12 in the C-terminal 100 amino acid region. They were localized in chloroplast. The chloroplast of apg11 did not have thylakoid, only have vacuoles. On the other hand, one of apg12 contained few internal thylakoid membranes. APG11 and APG12 equally expressed in all tissues that we analyzed in this study. The expression of some photosynthetic genes encoded in chloroplast genome was greatly reduced, but one of nuclear encoded genes was not affected in these mutants. When comparing the accumulation of chloroplast rRNAs in these mutants and wild type, rRNAs were decreased by approximately 25% in these mutants. Now we are finding proteins interacted APG11 and APG12 using the yeast two hybrid system.
