Plant Chitinase
Plant chitinase is an enzyme that hydrolyzes chitin, a component of fungal cell walls. The enzyme plays an important role in plant defense and tolerance to heat, salt and drought. In pathogen defense, expression of the enzyme allows plants to hydrolyze the cell wall of pathogenic fungi. Understanding the gene regulation pattern of the chitinase genes and the function of the chitinase protein has important implications in plant biological control, plant defense against disease and the ability of plants to tolerate abiotic stress (heat, salt and drought). One way to study the chitinase gene is to clone the gene and use it to monitor in-vitro and in-vivo chitinase expression.
We have obtained a Phaseolus vulgaris (bean) chitinase cDNA clone constructed by Hedrick et al. (1988). They reported that the cDNA insert is 0.65 Kb, but previous Genetics research groups have had trouble characterizing the chitinase cDNA clone. Your goal is to document the size of the chitinase cDNA clone and prove that the clone is actually chitinase by DNA sequence analysis.
I Getting Started – Articles to read.
1. Kwon et al. 2007 The Plant Journal 49:184-193
2. Markovich and Kononova 2003 Applied Biochemistry and Microbiology 39:341-351
3. Hedrick et al. 1988 Plant Physiol. 86:182-186.
Open assignments on ‘srv2’(K:), open CTepper, open 315 and open the folder titled Lab. There you will find a folder called Chitinase. If you open this folder, you will find the articles listed above.
II Methods