The synthesis of phaseolin: a model for the study of the plant secretory pathway

Abstract

Phascolin, the major seed storage protein of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), has been for many years one of the main working horses for studying protein synthesis, trafficking and structural maturation in the secretory pathway of higher plants. Recently, phaseolin has been used as a tool to determine molecular interactions between chaperones and newly-synthesised wild-type or structurally-defective secretory proteins in plant cells. Despite the vast amount of information available on the structure and the cell biology of phaseolin, the determinants for its sorting to the vacuole are still unknown.