Poster: Regulation of gene expression

Abs # 751: The use of different promoter generates alternatively splicing variants of OsBWMK1 gene

Presenter:	Koo, Sung Cheol , ksch992@hotmail.com
Authors	Koo, Sung Cheol  (A)   Moon, Byung Cheol  (A)   Koo, Yoon Duck  (A)   Park, Byung Ouk  (B)   Chung, Woo Sik  (A)   Yoon, Hae Won  (A)   Sang, Sang Yeol  (A)   Cho,  Moo Je  (A)
Affiliations:	(A): Environmental Biotechnology Research Center (B): Division of Applied Life Science

The mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) play important roles in regulation of cell growth and survival. OsBWMK1 (Oriza sativa Blast and Wound induced MAP Kinase) belongs to the fourth subfamily of plant MAP kinase and functions to resist the pathogen attack and wounding. RACE PCR products from fungal elicitor treated rice cDNA showed three OsBWMK1 transcript variants. Genomic DNA sequence analysis allowed that these three variants are resulting from products of alternative splicing of two different pre-mRNAs from the OsBWMK1 gene. The protein sequences deduced from these three cDNAs, OsBWMK1L (Long), OsBWMKIM (Medium), and OsBWMK1S (Short), are identical in catalytic domain of kinase but variable in their N-terminal regions. RT-PCR and Northern Blot analysis demonstrated that alternative splicing could be regulated by environmental stresses. The expression of OsBWMKIM and OsBWMK1S are induced by abiotic and biotic stresses, although OsBWMK1L is constitutively expressed in high level. As results of transient expression, OsBWMK1L and OsBWMK1S tagged with GFP were localized to cytoplasm and nucleus , respectively. Our data show that alternative splicing of OsBWMK1 gene generates three different transcripts and subsequently, three protein isoforms may perform diverse function in different location. [This work was supported by a grant from the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) to the Environmental Biotechnology Research Center]