Functional and structural studies of the Presequence protease, PreP

................................................................................................................................ 5 Publications ........................................................................................................................... 6 The thesis is based on the following publications ............................................................................... 6 Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................ 7 Mitochondria and chloroplasts ............................................................................................... 8 The mitochondrial genome ................................................................................................................. 9 Function and structure of mitochondria ............................................................................................. 9 The chloroplast genome .................................................................................................................... 10 Function and structure of chloroplasts ............................................................................................. 10 Protein targeting and import into the mitochondrial matrix ............................................................ 11 Mitochondrial processing peptidases ............................................................................................... 13 Protein targeting and import into chloroplast stroma ...................................................................... 14 Stromal processing peptidase ........................................................................................................... 16 Dual-targeting to mitochondria and chloroplasts ............................................................................. 16 Proteolysis in mitochondria and chloroplasts ........................................................................17 The ATP dependent proteases .......................................................................................................... 17 Clp proteases ................................................................................................................................. 17 FtsH proteases ............................................................................................................................... 17 Lon proteases ................................................................................................................................ 18 The ATP independent proteases ....................................................................................................... 19 Rhomboid proteases ..................................................................................................................... 19 Deg proteases ................................................................................................................................ 19 OOP ................................................................................................................................................ 20 PreP ............................................................................................................................................... 20 Material & Methods ..............................................................................................................21 Paper I................................................................................................................................................ 21 Generation of mutant Arabidopsis plants, single and double knockouts ..................................... 21 Growth conditions of A. thaliana plants ....................................................................................... 21 Purification of mitochondria and chloroplasts .............................................................................. 21 Degradation assays ........................................................................................................................ 22 Respiratory measurements ........................................................................................................... 22