Poster: Late and Moved Abstracts

Abs # 1433: Identification of Novel Cell Wall Protein Genes and their Functionality in Arabidopsis

Presenter:	Wu, Yajun , yajun.wu@usu.edu
Authors	Wu, Yajun  (A)   DeWald, Daryll  (A)   Chen, Dong  (A)   Qian, Ying  (A)
Affiliations:	(A): Utah State University

Cell wall proteins (proteins that are localized in the wall) play essential roles in a plant’s life, including signaling, cell wall metabolism and architecture, responses to biotic and abiotic stresses and many other processes in plant growth and development. Thus, identification of all cell wall proteins and understanding their functions is an imperative step toward a full understanding of how a plant grows and develops. Availability of the complete Arabidopsis thaliana genome sequence makes it possible to speed up gene discovery and functional analysis for cell wall proteins. We have identified a list of genes that encode unknown-function protein that contain signal peptides. These proteins will be examined for cell wall localization using transient plant transformation method. The proteins showing clear wall localization will be further investigated for their functions in plant growth and development using reverse genetics (both loss-of-function mutation and over-expression). Currently, we are characterizing a few genes selected from the list.