selenium is a metalloid that it is antioxidant characteristics is proved for humans, animals and plants. however, some plants are known as hyper accumulators for selenium and sometimes seems to be useful for growth of some plants. in this paper, we have studied the effect of different selenium concentrations on growth and morpho-physiological characteristics of spinach. seeds of spinach were ge...

The complete amino acid sequence of ferredoxin isolated from a green alga, Scenedesmus species, was determined by analyses of tryptic and chymotryptic digests, and cyanogen bromide cleavage of the S-carboxymethylcysteinylferredoxin. The total number of amino acid residues is 96, one less than for the higher plant ferredoxins. It is the first chloroplasttype ferredoxin found lacking in tryptopha...

Hammerhead ribozymes are self-cleaving RNA molecules capable of regulating gene expression in living cells. Their cleavage performance is strongly influenced by intra-molecular loop-loop interactions, a feature not readily accessible through modern prediction algorithms. Ribozyme engineering and efficient implementation of ribozyme-based genetic switches requires detailed knowledge of individua...

Phytotoxicity is a significant consideration in understanding the potential environmental impact of nanoparticles. Abundant experimental data have shown that multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) are toxic to plants, but the potential impacts of exposure remain unclear. The objective of the present study was to evaluate possible phytotoxicity of MWNTs at 0, 20, 200, 1000, and 2000 mg/L with red...

The role of an electron transport pathway associated with aerobic carbohydrate degradation in isolated, intact chloroplasts was evaluated. This was accomplished by monitoring the evolution of (14)CO(2) from darkened spinach (Spinacia oleracea) and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii chloroplasts externally supplied with [(14)C]fructose and [(14)C]glucose, respectively, in the presence of nitrite, oxaloac...

The half-life of plastoquinone (PQ), ubiquinone-9 (UQ-9) and ubiquinone-10 (UQ-10) in spinach tissue was determined. This was achieved by monitoring the decay of radioactivity incorporated into these lipids from a labeled precursor. The half-life of PQ was 15 h while for UQ-9 and UQ-10 it was longer, i.e. 30 h. The values of half-lives of PQ and UQ suggest a high rate of turnover of these lipid...

An 11.2-kilobase pair (kbp) BamHI restriction nuclease fragment from spinach chloroplast DNA has been found to contain the gene for the large subunit (LS) of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase [RuP(2) carboxylase; 3-phospho-D-glycerate carboxy-lyase (dimerizing), EC 4.1.1.39]. The gene was located by hybridization of cloned chloroplast DNA fragments containing the maize LS gene (Bedbrook, J....

A chloroplast type of fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase, a central regulatory enzyme of photosynthetic carbon metabolism, has been partially purified from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Unlike its counterpart from spinach chloroplasts, the algal FBPase showed a strict requirement for a dithiol reductant irrespective of Mg2+ concentration. The enzymes from the two sources resembled each other immunologic...

An experimental arrangement is described which enables high quality 31P NMR spectra of compressed spinach leaf pieces to be continuously recorded in which all the resonances observed (cytoplasmic and vacuolar Pi, glycerate-3-P, nucleotides) were sharp and well resolved. 31P NMR spectra obtained from intact chloroplasts showed a distinct peak of stromal Pi. An upfield shift of the stromal Pi res...

BACKGROUND Discrepancies have been reported between estimates of the prevalence of riboflavin deficiency based on intakes of riboflavin and estimates based on measures of riboflavin status. One reason for this may be an overestimate of the bioavailability of riboflavin from foods, about which relatively little is known. OBJECTIVE We aimed to quantify the bioavailability of riboflavin from mil...