meagher%gandal.dnet@ASMUS1.GENETICS.UGA.EDU (12/13/90)
An Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Institution From: Richard B. Meagher, Professor University of Georgia Department of Genetics Athens, Georgia 30602 Phone: (404) 542-1444 RBM FAX: (404) 542-3910 Network: Meagher%gandal.dne+@server.uga.edu I have positions open for postdoctoral fellows and/or graduate students to work on expression of higher plant actins and on RNA turnover. We have shown that the plant actin genes belong to a diverse and ancient family. Initial data suggests that the different genes and proteins will be differentially expressed and may play distinct roles in the cytoskeleton. Recently we began to examine the tissue specific and developmental expression of the actins in Arabidopsis. There are 11-15 genes and a large number of actin protein isovariants. PCR sequencing from small amounts of mRNA has been developed as an assay for the actin RNA phenotypes of various cell types. In order to correlate tissue specific patterns of expression with actin function, actin insertion mutants or antisense mutants will be isolated. In a separate project we have shown that the stability of rbcS (rubisco small subunit) RNA is in some cases light regulated. To explore the mechanisms and determinants of RNA turnover in plants we have just developed an in vitro RNA degradation system. It generates the same rbcS RNA degradation products as are observed in vivo. The students on this project are finishing this academic year and the project will be wide open. If your are interested please write to the above address, contact me by phone or use my network mail address. A few recent publications from these two projects are listed below. McLean, B. G., Eubanks, S. and Meagher, R. B. (1990a) Tissue specific expression of divergent actins in soybean root. Plant Cell. 2: 335-344. McLean, B. G., Huang, S., Cohen, E. and Meagher, R. B. (1990) Plants contain a family of highly divergent actin isovariants. Cell Motility. 17: (in press) McLean, M., Gerats, A. G. M., Baird, W. V. and Meagher, R. B. (1990b) Six actin gene subfamilies map to five chromosomes of Petunia hybrida. J. Heredity. 81:341-346. Meagher, R. B. (1990) Divergence and differential expression of actin gene families in higher plants. Internatl. Rev. Cytol. in press: Meagher, R. B., Berry-Lowe, S. and Rice, K. (1989) Molecular evolution of the small subunit of ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase: nucleotide substitution and gene conversion. Genetics. 123: 845-863. Meagher, R. B. and McLean, B. G. (1990) Diversity of Plant Actins. Cell Motilility. 16:164-166. Pearson, L. and Meagher, R. B. (1990) Diverse soybean actin transcripts contain a large intron in the 5' untranslated leader: Structural similarity to vertebrate muscle actin genes. Plant Mol. Biol. 14: 513-526. Senecoff, J. F. and Meagher, R. B. (1991) In vivo analysis of plant 18S rRNA structure: Evolution of plant 18S rRNA. In: "Methods in Enzymology". Zimmer, E. (in press) Shirley, B. W., Ham, D. P., Senecoff, J. F., Berry-Lowe, S. L., Zurfluh, L. L., Shah, D. M. and Meagher, R. B. (1990) Comparison of the expression of two highly homologous members of the soybean ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase small subunit gene family. Plant Mol. Biol. 14: 909-925. Shirley, B. W. and Meagher, R. B. (1990) A potential role for RNA turnover in the light regulation of plant gene expression: ribulose- 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase small subunit in soybean. Nuc. Acids Resh. 18:3377-3385. Thompson, D. M. and Meagher, R. B. (1990) Transcriptional and post-transcriptional processes regulate expression of RNA encoding the small subunit of ribulose-1,5- bisphosphate carboxylase differently in petunia and in soybean. Nuc. Acids Resh. 18: 3621- 3629.