Investigation of plant latices of Asteraceae and Campanulaceae regarding proteolytic activity

Occurrence of plant latices is widespread, there are more than 40 families of plants characterized to establish lactiferous structures. The appearance of hydrolytic active proteins, incorporated in latices is already characterized, and hydrolytic active proteins are considerable, and for several plant families, the occurrence of hydrolytic active proteins is already specified e.g. Apocynaceae Juss., Caricaceae Dumort, Euphorbiaceae Juss., Moraceae Gaudich and Papaveraceae Juss. In our investigation, focused on latex bearing plants of order Asterales, Asteraceae and Campanulaceae in particular. The present outcomes represent a comprehensive study, relating to the occurrence of proteolytic active enzymes of order Asterales for the first time. 131 different species of Asteraceae and Campanulaceae were tested, and the appearance of plant latex proteases were determined in different quantities. Proteolytic activity was investigated by inhibitory studies and determination of residual activity in the following, enable us to characterize the proteases. Most of the considered species exhibit a serine protease activity and a multiplicity of species exhibited two or more subclasses of proteases.

Potential functional replacement of the plastidic acetyl-CoA carboxylase subunit (accD) gene by recent transfers to the nucleus in some angiosperm lineages

Eukaryotic cells originated when an ancestor of the nucleated cell engulfed bacterial endosymbionts that gradually evolved into the mitochondrion and the chloroplast. Soon after these endosymbiotic events, thousands of ancestral prokaryotic genes were functionally transferred from the endosymbionts to the nucleus. This process of functional gene relocation, now rare in eukaryotes, continues in angiosperms. In this article, we show that the chloroplastic acetyl-CoA carboxylase subunit (accD) gene that is present in the plastome of most angiosperms has been functionally relocated to the nucleus in the Campanulaceae. Surprisingly, the nucleus-encoded accD transcript is considerably smaller than the plastidic version, consisting of little more than the carboxylase domain of the plastidic accD gene fused to a coding region encoding a plastid targeting peptide. We verified experimentally the presence of a chloroplastic transit peptide by showing that the product of the nuclear accD fused to green fluorescent protein was imported in the chloroplasts. The nuclear gene regulatory elements that enabled the erstwhile plastidic gene to become functional in the nuclear genome were identified, and the evolution of the intronic and exonic sequences in the nucleus is described. Relocation and truncation of the accD gene is a remarkable example of the processes underpinning endosymbiotic evolution.