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. 1989 Mar;89(3):993–999. doi: 10.1104/pp.89.3.993

Chloroplast Protein Import 1

Quantitative Analysis of Precursor Binding

Alan L Friedman 1,2, Kenneth Keegstra 1
PMCID: PMC1055956  PMID: 16666654

Abstract

The first step of chloroplast protein import is binding of a precursor protein to the surface of the organelle. Precursor binding for the small subunit of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase to isolated pea chloroplasts was investigated using a receptor-ligand binding assay. Translocation of precursors was blocked by conducting the binding assays at 0°C. Binding of precursor was judged to be receptor mediated by the following criteria: (a) precursor binding was saturable at between 1500 and 3500 molecules per chloroplast; (b) binding is a high affinity interaction with a dissociation constant of 6 to 10 nanomoles; (c) binding is physiologically productive since most of the bound precursors could be imported from the bound state; and (d) precursor binding was sensitive to both protease and the sulfhydryl modifying reagent N-ethylmaleimide. The effects of these two reagents differed in that protease reduced the total number of binding sites from the surface of chloroplasts but had little effect on binding affinity, whereas N-ethylmaleimide reduced the binding affinity but had little or no effect on receptor density.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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