Isolation and characterization of two genes of the early light-induced proteins of Camellia sinensis

Abstract

Early light-induced proteins (ELIPs) are nuclear-encoded thylakoid proteins. In the present research, two full-length cDNAs (741 and 815 bp), encoding ELIPs (190 and 175 aa) and their genomic sequences, were isolated from tea leaves, and named CsELIP1 and CsELIP2, respectively. Both the deduced CsELIPs contain a chloroplast transit peptide in the N-terminus and a chlorophyll a/b binding protein motif with three transmembrane helices in the C-terminus. The genomic sequences of the two CsELIPs conform to the three-exon pattern of ELIP genomic sequences of other plant species. However, the identities between two CsELIPs and ACJ09655 from gymnosperm species were higher than all of ELIP-like proteins identified from other angiosperms. Expression analysis showed that the two CsELIP genes were significantly up-regulated when the photoinhibition occurred in tea leaves, implying that they might be involved in photoprotection.