Microbody defective mutants of arabidopsis

In germinating fatty seedlings, microbodies are differentiated to leaf peroxisomes from glyoxysomes during greening, and then transformed to glyoxysomes from leaf peroxisomes during senescence. These transformations of microbodies are regulated at various level, such as gene expression, splicing of the mRNA and degradation of microbody proteins. In order to clarify the regulatory mechanisms underlying these transformations of microbodies, we tried to obtain glyoxysome-deficient mutants of Arabidopsis. We screened 2,4-dichlorophenoxybutyric acid (2,4-DB) mutants of Arabidopsis which have defects in glyoxysomal fatty acid β-oxidation. Four mutants can be classified as carrying alleles at three independent loci, which we designatedped1, ped2, andped3, respectively (whereped stands for peroxisome defective). The characteristics of theseped mutants are described. The extended abstract of a paper presented at the 13th International Symposium in Conjugation with Award of the International Prize for Biology “Frontier of Plant Biology”