Degree Name

MS (Master of Science)

Program

Biology

Date of Award

8-2003

Committee Chair or Co-Chairs

Lee M. Pike, Cecilia A. McIntosh

Committee Members

Hugh A. Miller III

Abstract

Flavonoids play crucial roles in plant life cycles and in human welfare. Grapefruit plants produce several glycosylated flavonoids and the glycosylation reactions are catalyzed by UDP-glucose: glucosyltransferases (GTs). Our objective was to use the SMART RACE RT-PCR strategy to obtain cDNA sequences of putative grapefruit flavonoid GTs. Gene specific primers were designed from the plant secondary product glucosyltransferase (PSPG) box and used to amplify 5’GT clones. Clone-specific primers were designed from 5’clones to amplify 3’ GT clones. We obtained 5 5’ clones and 1 3’ clone as candidate GTs. We used 3 of these clones to predict 2 compiled GT sequences. Structural comparison of the putative GTs with functionally known GTs from other plants showed an overall low pair-wise sequence identity (11-31%), but high identity (52.2-75%) within the PSPG box. We conclude that assignment of function from sequence information is not appropriate; assignment should depend on biochemical characterization of expressed GT enzymes.

Document Type

Thesis - unrestricted

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

Included in

Biology Commons

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