Publications by authors named "Patrizia Pallara"

Background: Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is an unicellular green alga used for functional genomics studies and heterologous protein expression. A major hindrance in these studies is the low level and instability of expression of nuclear transgenes, due to their rearrangement and/or silencing over time.

Results: We constructed dedicated vectors for Agrobacterium-mediated transformation carrying, within the T-DNA borders, the Paromomycin (Paro) selectable marker and an expression cassette containing the Luciferase (Luc) reporter gene.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cryptochromes are blue light photoreceptors found in plants, bacteria, and animals. In Arabidopsis, cryptochrome 2 (cry2) is involved primarily in the control of flowering time and in photomorphogenesis under low-fluence light. No data on the function of cry2 are available in plants, apart from Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ripe tomato fruits accumulate significant amounts of the linear carotene lycopene, but only trace amounts of xanthophylls (oxygenated carotenoids). We overexpressed the lycopene beta-cyclase (b-Lcy) and beta-carotene hydroxylase (b-Chy) genes under the control of the fruit-specific Pds promoter. Transgene and protein expression was followed through semi-quantitative reverse transcription-PCR, Western blotting, and enzyme assays.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF