Characterization of Light and Nitrogen Regulated Gene Expression Pathways inMarine Diatoms

摘要

This report summarizes the results of ONR funded research focused oncharacterization of the genes and gene products for several biosynthetic and structural proteins found in marine diatoms with the goal to utilize molecular probes generated from these studies to monitor molecular events regulating the production dynamics of marine phytoplankton. The diatom Skeletonema Costatum, an ubiquitous coastal species was selected as a model system. The polymerase chain reaction utilizing consensus oligonucleotide primers to conserved amino acid domains was employed and used to isolate genomic and cDNA fragments corresponding to the sequences encoding the nitrogen assimilatory enzymes nitrate reductase (NR) and glutamine synthetase (GS) and the structural proteins actin and the fucoxanthin chlorophyll a/c protein (FCP).