A cloned fragment of spinach chloroplast DNA carrying the gene for the large subunit of ribulose bisphosphate (RuBP) carboxylase has been analysed by electron microscopy of R-loops, by hybridization to Northern blots of chloroplast RNA, by S1 nuclease mapping and by DNA sequencing. The transcribed region of the gene is 1690 +/- 3 nucleotides long and co-linear with its mRNA. It comprises a 178-179 bp 5' untranslated sequence, a 1425 bp coding region and an 85-88 bp 3' untranslated region. The deduced sequence of the 475 amino acids of the spinach large subunit protein shows 10% divergence from that of the maize large subunit protein (1). The nucleotide sequence divergence between spinach and maize over the same coding region is 16% but in the transcribed flanking regions it is 35%. Features of the spinach chloroplast gene which resemble those of bacterial genes include a 5-base Shine-Dalgarno sequence complementary to a sequence near the 3' end of chloroplast and bacterial 16S rRNA, a promoter region partially homologous to a consensus sequence of bacterial promoters, and a transcription termination region capable of forming a typical stem and loop structure.

The gene for the so-called Mr 32,000 rapidly labeled photosystem II thylakoid membrane protein (here designated psbA) of spinach (Spinacia oleracea) chloroplasts is located on the chloroplast DNA in the large single-copy region immediately adjacent to one of the inverted repeat sequences. In this paper we show that the size of the mRNA for this protein is '=1.25 kilobases and that the direction of transcription is towards the inverted repeat unit. The nucleotide sequence of the gene and its flanking regions is presented. The only large open reading frame in the sequence codes for a protein of Mr 38,950. The nucleotide sequence of psbA from Nicotiana debneyi also has been determined, and comparison of the sequences from the two species shows them to be highly conserved (>95% homology) throughout the entire reading frame. Conservation ofthe amino acid sequence is absolute, there being no changes in a total of 353 residues. This leads us to conclude that the primary translation product of psbA must be a protein of Mr 38,950. The protein is characterized by the complete absence of lysine residues and is relatively rich in hydrophobic amino acids, which tend to be clustered. Transcription ofspinach psbA starts about 86 base pairs before the first ATG codon. Immediately upstream from this point there is a sequence typical of that found in E. coli promoters. An almost identical sequence occurs in the equivalent region of N. debneyi DNA.

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