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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

Arabidopsis thaliana, mitochondrial genome, DNA recombination

College

Life Sciences

Department

Plant and Wildlife Sciences

Abstract

Although the mitochondrial genome of Arabidopsis thaliana has been sequenced in full, many questions remain regarding gene expression and replication of the genome. RecA and SSB gene homologues have been identified and shown to be targeted specifically to mitochondria. One question currently being investigated is the role of other proteins in mitochondrial DNA recombination, including the products of the DNA polymerase and topoisomerase II genes. These enzymes play important roles in DNA recombination in other organisms and homologous genes with putative targeting to mitochondria have been identified in Arabidopsis thaliana. Seeds with T-DNA insertions in the DNA polymerase and topoisomerase II genes have been obtained. These seeds were allowed to germinate and grow, and were compared phenotypically to plants grown from wild-type seeds. Once variations in the phenotypes were observed, further work needed to be done in order to discover exactly what changes resulted from the T-DNA insert. First, it was necessary to utilize PCR to confirm the location of the T-DNA insert within the gene. Other experiments included the use of electron microscopy to observe any changes in mitochondrial structure and morphology and analysis of the mitochondrial DNA. Analysis of the differences in the plants allowed for several conclusions to be drawn about the importance of each of these proteins to recombination of the mitochondrial DNA of Arabidopsis thaliana.

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