Reference "Identification and characterization of two rice autophagy associated genes, OsAtg8 and OsAtg4"

Reference ID

11433

Title

Identification and characterization of two rice autophagy associated genes, OsAtg8 and OsAtg4

Source

Mol Biol Rep, 2006, vol. 33, pp. 273-278

Authors (5)

Su-W	Ma-H
Liu-C	Wu-J
Yang-J

Abstract

Autophagy is an intracellular process for vacuolar degradation of cytoplasmic
components. The molecular machinery responsible for yeast and mammalian
autophagy has begun to be elucidated at the cellular level. A genome-wide search
revealed significant conservation among autophagy genes in yeast and
Arabidopsis. Up till now, however, there is no report about rice autophagy
associated genes. Here we cloned OsAtg8 and OsAtg4 from Oryza sativa and
detected their expression patterns in various tissues. Immunoblotting analysis
showed that carboxyl terminus of OsAtg8 can be cleaved in yeast cell. Mutation
analysis revealed that the conserved Gly117 residue of OsAtg8 was essential for
its characteristic C-terminal cleavage as similar to that found in mammalian and
yeast Atg8. We further proved that OsAtg8 interacted with OsAtg4, and this
interaction was not affected by the conserved Gly117 mutation. Our results
demonstrate that Atg8 conjugation pathway is conserved in rice and may play
important roles in rice autophagy.