REVIEWS  7th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TRANSGLUTAMINASES AND PROTEIN CROSSLINKING REACTIONS
Ferrara (Italy), September 14-17, 2002 

Minerva Biotecnologica 2002 June;14(2):135-41

Copyright © 2003 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Biochemistry and function of plant transglutaminases

Serafini Fracassi D., Del Duca S.

Department of Biology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Research on trans­glu­ta­mi­nas­es in ­plants ­lags ­behind ­that in mam­mal­ian ­systems, ­aspects ­still remain­ing elu­sive. In ­this ­review, we sur­vey the ­plant TGase lit­er­a­ture pub­lished ­after the pre­vi­ous ­review. Plant TGases, ­still unclas­si­fied, are wide­spread in “high­er” and “low­er” ­plants, in sev­er­al ­plant ­organs and prob­ably dif­fer­ent iso­forms are dif­fer­ent­ly locat­ed in var­i­ous ­cell com­part­ments: chlo­ro­plasts, mito­chon­dria, cyto­plasm, ­cell ­walls. They prob­ably ­exert a main­ly struc­tu­ral or con­for­ma­tion­al ­role; how­ev­er, in chlo­ro­plasts and mito­chon­dria ­their ­roles ­might be relat­ed to the ­organelles’ spe­cif­ic metab­olisms. Transgluta-minases ­appear relat­ed to ­growth (­cell ­cycle, api­cal ­growth, seed­ling ­growth), dif­fe­ren­ti­a­tion, pro­grammed ­cell ­death and ­stress.