an engineered pathway for glyoxylate metabolism in tobacco plants aimed to avoid the release of ammonia in photorespiration一个工程的乙醛酸代谢途径,旨在避免烟草植物光呼吸释放的氨气.pdfVIP

Carvalho et al. BMC Biotechnology 2011, 11:111 /1472-6750/11/111 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access An engineered pathway for glyoxylate metabolism in tobacco plants aimed to avoid the release of ammonia in photorespiration 1,2 2 2 2 3 Josirley de FC Carvalho , Pippa J Madgwick , Stephen J Powers , Alfred J Keys , Peter J Lea and Martin AJ Parry2* Abstract Background: The photorespiratory nitrogen cycle in C3 plants involves an extensive diversion of carbon and nitrogen away from the direct pathways of assimilation. The liberated ammonia is re-assimilated, but up to 25% of the carbon may be released into the atmosphere as CO2. Because of the loss of CO2 and high energy costs, there has been considerable interest in attempts to decrease the flux through the cycle in C3 plants. Transgenic tobacco plants were generated that contained the genes gcl and hyi from E. coli encoding glyoxylate carboligase (EC 7) and hydroxypyruvate isomerase (EC 2) respectively, targeted to the peroxisomes. It was presumed that the two enzymes could work together and compete with the aminotransferases that convert glyoxylate to glycine, thus avoiding ammonia production in the photorespiratory nitrogen cycle. Results: When grown in ambient air, but not in elevated CO2, the transgenic tobacco lines had a distinctive phenotype of necrotic lesions on the leaves. Three of the six lines chosen for a detailed study contained single copies of the gcl gene, two contained single copies of both the gcl and hyi genes and one line contained multiple copies of both gcl and hyi genes. The gcl protein was detected in the five transgenic lines containing single copies of the gcl gene but hyi protein was not dete