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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1987 Dec;84(24):9006–9010. doi: 10.1073/pnas.84.24.9006

Mobilization of T-DNA from Agrobacterium to plant cells involves a protein that binds single-stranded DNA.

C Gietl 1, Z Koukolíková-Nicola 1, B Hohn 1
PMCID: PMC299680  PMID: 3480525

Abstract

Crude protein extracts of induced and uninduced octopine wild-type strain of Agrobacterium tumefaciens, as well as several mutants of the virulence loci virA, -B, -G, -C, -D, and -E, were probed with single- and double-stranded synthetic oligodeoxynucleotides of different sequence and length in an electrophoretic retardation assay. Four complexes involving sequence-nonspecific, single-stranded-DNA-binding proteins were recognized. One inducible complex is determined by the virE locus, two Ti-plasmid-dependent complexes are constitutively expressed, and a fourth one is controlled by chromosomal genes. The protein-DNA complexes were characterized by sucrose density gradient centrifugation and by determination of the length of single-stranded DNA required for their formation. It is hypothesized that the single-stranded-DNA-binding proteins are involved in the production of T-DNA intermediates or have a carrier or protective function during T-DNA transfer.

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Selected References

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