Changes in protein translation induced by light

March 16, 2020

After seeds germinate in the soil, plants begin to grow (morphogenesis) when they are hit by light. However, the process—altered gene expression after photoreception—is not well understood.In this study, the research team determined all the open reading frames (ORFs) encoded by Arabidopsis messenger RNA (mRNA). Then, by shining blue light on the plants and measuring translational efficiency, they were able to find a regulatory mechanism. Although gene expression is generally thought to be controlled by the amount of mRNA in a plant, the research team found that it is also affected by translational efficiency

These findings can be applied to technologies used to control crop gene expression in varying environments.

Original article

Plant and Cell Physiology doi:10.1093/pcp/pcz219

Y. Kurihara, Y. Makita, H. Shimohira, T. Fujita, S. Iwasaki, M. Matsui,

"Translational landscape of protein-coding and non-protein-coding RNAs upon light exposure in Arabidopsis".

Contact

Yukio Kurihara; Research Scientist

Yuko Makita; Research Scientist

Minami Matsui; Group Director

Synthetic Genomics Research Group