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A Genetic Approach to Identify Proteins that Interact with Eukaryotic Microtubule Severing Proteins via a Yeast Two Hybrid System

Microtubules (MT) are regulated by multiple categories of proteins, including proteins responsible for severing MTs that are therefore called MT-severing proteins. Studies of katanin, spastin, and fidgetin in animal systems have clarified that these proteins are MT-severing. However, studies in plants have been limited to katanin p60, and little is known about spastin or fidgetin and their function in plants. I looked at plant genomes to identify MT-severing protein homologues to clarify which severing proteins exist in plants. I obtained data from a variety of eukaryotic species to look for MT-severing proteins using homology to human proteins and analyzed these protein sequences to obtain information on the evolution of MT-severing proteins in different species. I focused this analysis on MT-severing proteins in the maize and Arabidopsis thaliana genomes. I created evolutionary phylogenetic trees for katanin-p60, katanin-p80, spastin, and fidgetin using sequences from animal, plant, and fungal genomes. I focused on Arabidopsis spastin and worked to understand its functionality by identifying protein interaction partners. The yeast two-hybrid technique was used to screen an Arabidopsis cDNA library to identify putative spastin interactors. I sought to confirm the putative protein interactions by using molecular tools for protein localization such as the YFP system. Finally, a Biomolecular Fluorescence Complementation (BiFC) assay was initiated as a proof of concept for confirmation of in vivo protein-protein interaction.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc1703276
Date05 1900
CreatorsAlhassan, Hassan H
ContributorsShah, Jyoti, Wright, Amanda, Longo, Antonella, Azad, Rajeev, Kim, Tracy
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatxi, 154 pages, Text
RightsPublic, Alhassan, Hassan H, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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