Use of Jaz Degrons in the Study of Protein Function in Physcomitrium patens

Horta, George W.

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Use of Jaz Degrons in the Study of Protein Function in Physcomitrium patens

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Conditional protein loss-of-function is a valuable tool to investigate the function of proteins whose functions are vital for cell function. Protein-degron fusions have been used successfully in many organisms to achieve conditional loss-of-function. The Jaz degron is based on short sequences from plant proteins degraded when the cell is exposed to methyl-jasmonate. For this MQP, we investigated the effect of fusing Jaz degrons to myosin XI, a protein essential for cell growth in the model plant Physcomitrium patens. We used a complementation system based on two vectors, one for silencing myosin XI by RNAi and a second vector including an RNAi-resistant coding sequence of myosin XI fused to a short sequence hypothesized to function as a “degron.” To test the effect of the degron in the presence of methyl-jasmonate, we first identified concentrations of methyl-jasmonate that had no effect on the growth of untransformed cells. We then tested the effect of these concentrations on plants complemented with the myosin XI-degron. Our results suggest that additional optimizations will be needed because methyl-jasmonate treatment produces non-specific effects when using methods required for transformant selection.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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