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Biomedical subjects

Kristian B Axelsen

Publications and source records attributed to Kristian B Axelsen.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Phytoplasmas and their interactions with hosts.

Phytoplasmas are bacteria without cell walls and are responsible for plant diseases that have large economic impacts. Knowledge of their biology is limited because they are uncultivable and experimentally inaccessible in their hosts. It is a mystery how these bacteria use the sugar-rich phloem sap in which they live and how they interact with the host. This makes it difficult to develop means to control them. Recently, the full genomes of two phytoplasmas have been sequenced, allowing new insights into their requirements. Phytoplasmas contain a minimal genome and lack genes coding for ATP synthases and sugar uptake and use, making them dependent on their host. This dependency can be exploited to elucidate the particular physiology of the phloem.

Genome, Bacterial↗

IntEnz, the integrated relational enzyme database.

IntEnz is the name for the Integrated relational Enzyme database and is the official version of the Enzyme Nomenclature. The Enzyme Nomenclature comprises recommendations of the Nomenclature Committee of the International Union of Bio chemistry and Molecular Biology (NC-IUBMB) on the nomenclature and classification of enzyme-catalysed reactions. IntEnz is supported by NC-IUBMB and contains enzyme data curated and approved by this committee. The database IntEnz is available at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/intenz.

Animals↗

Transcriptome analysis of root transporters reveals participation of multiple gene families in the response to cation stress.

Plant nutrition critically depends on the activity of membrane transporters that translocate minerals from the soil into the plant and are responsible for their intra- and intercellular distribution. Most plant membrane transporters are encoded by multigene families whose members often exhibit overlapping expression patterns and a high degree of sequence homology. Furthermore, many inorganic nutrients are transported by more than one transporter family. These considerations, coupled with a large number of so-far non-annotated putative transporter genes, hamper our progress in understanding how the activity of specific transporters is integrated into a response to fluctuating conditions. We designed an oligonucleotide microarray representing 1096 Arabidopsis transporter genes and analysed the root transporter transcriptome over a 96-h period with respect to 80 mM NaCl, K+ starvation and Ca2+ starvation. Our data show that cation stress led to changes in transcript level of many genes across most transporter gene families. Analysis of transcriptionally modulated genes across all functional groups of transporters revealed families such as V-type ATPases and aquaporins that responded to all treatments, and families - which included putative non-selective cation channels for the NaCl treatment and metal transporters for Ca2+ starvation conditions - that responded to specific ionic environments. Several gene families including primary pumps, antiporters and aquaporins were analysed in detail with respect to the mRNA levels of different isoforms during ion stress. Cluster analysis allowed identification of distinct expression profiles, and several novel putative regulatory motifs were discovered within sets of co-expressed genes.

Arabidopsis↗

Genomic comparison of P-type ATPase ion pumps in Arabidopsis and rice.

Members of the P-type ATPase ion pump superfamily are found in all three branches of life. Forty-six P-type ATPase genes were identified in Arabidopsis, the largest number yet identified in any organism. The recent completion of two draft sequences of the rice (Oryza sativa) genome allows for comparison of the full complement of P-type ATPases in two different plant species. Here, we identify a similar number (43) in rice, despite the rice genome being more than three times the size of Arabidopsis. The similarly large families suggest that both dicots and monocots have evolved with a large preexisting repertoire of P-type ATPases. Both Arabidopsis and rice have representative members in all five major subfamilies of P-type ATPases: heavy-metal ATPases (P1B), Ca2+-ATPases (endoplasmic reticulum-type Ca2+-ATPase and autoinhibited Ca2+-ATPase, P2A and P2B), H+-ATPases (autoinhibited H+-ATPase, P3A), putative aminophospholipid ATPases (ALA, P4), and a branch with unknown specificity (P5). The close pairing of similar isoforms in rice and Arabidopsis suggests potential orthologous relationships for all 43 rice P-type ATPases. A phylogenetic comparison of protein sequences and intron positions indicates that the common angiosperm ancestor had at least 23 P-type ATPases. Although little is known about unique and common features of related pumps, clear differences between some members of the calcium pumps indicate that evolutionarily conserved clusters may distinguish pumps with either different subcellular locations or biochemical functions.

Adenosine Triphosphatases↗