Project 2. Protein Sorting in Chloroplasts
The thylakoid membrane system within the chloroplast contains 4 large membrane
bound proteins complexes, in total comprised of circa 70 different subunits.
About 50% of these proteins are encoded by the chloroplast genome. Our long term
goal is to unravel the targeting, insertion and assembly of a subset of these
chloroplast-encoded thylakoid membrane proteins and, importantly, to understand
the coupling between translation and assembly. In the past we used several in
vitro systems to reconstitute and follow targeting and assembly
(refs #11-19, 21,
26, 27,
30). Currently, we are employing different mutants in
Arabidopsis thaliana to study the consequences on chloroplast biogenesis and the
chloroplast proteome on inactivation of sorting pathways.
