Protein- protein interaction studies of LOV domain containing proteins from unicellular algae
Student name: Ms Urwashi Priya
Guide: Dr Ramakrishnan Sitaraman
Year of completion: 2015
Host Organisation: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr K.V. Sindhu
Abstract: Light plays a significant role in many living creature’s life. To sense the changes in its intensity as well as wavelengths, living creatures have developed different detection mechanisms. Blue light is most effective in eliciting phototrophic effect because of its high energy. For detection of this blue light radiation, plants, and other photosynthetic organisms developed sensors named as phototropin. Phototropin has been found to be involved in phototropism as well as other events such as stomatal opening and chloroplast relocation in higher plants. In the unicellular algae C. reinhardtii, phototropin is found to be involved in phototactic responses and sexual life cycle. To decipher its different roles and mechanism of downstream processing in signal transduction cascade, protein-protein interaction study was done. To find novel interacting partners of LOV domain of phototropin pull-down assay was performed, two interacting proteins were observed, of sizes ~26 kDa and ~150 kDa in C. reinhardtii cc124. These protein bands can be analyzed in detail further for their identification and characterizations using different methods. Interacting partners retrieved through in silico analysis can also be used for future analysis and validation.
Key words: phototropin, LOV domain containing protein, protein-protein interaction, pull down.
