U.S. Department of Agriculture: Agricultural Research Service, Lincoln, Nebraska
Date of this Version
2008
Abstract
Transient expression of engineered reporter RNAs encoding an intron-containing green fluorescent protein (GFP) from a Potato virus X-based expression vector previously demonstrated the nuclear targeting capability of the 359 nucleotide Potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd) RNA genome. To further delimit the putative nuclear-targeting signal, PSTVd subgenomic fragments were embedded within the intron, and recombinant reporter RNAs were inoculated onto Nicotiana benthamiana plants. Appearance of green fluorescence in leaf tissue inoculated with PSTVd-fragment-containing constructs indicated shuttling of the RNA into the nucleus by fragments as short as 80 nucleotides in length. Plant-to-plant variation in the timing of intron removal and subsequent GFP fluorescence was observed; however, earliest and most abundant GFP expression was obtained with constructs containing the conserved hairpin I paand embedded upper central conserved region. Our results suggest that this conserved sequence and/or the stem-loop structure it forms is sufficient for import of PSTVd into the nucleus.
Comments
Published in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 368 (2008) 470–475.