Arabidopsis Pol II-Dependent in Vitro Transcription System Reveals Role of Chromatin for Light-Inducible rbcS Gene Transcription.

In vitro transcription is an essential tool to study the molecular mechanisms of transcription. For over a decade, we have developed an in vitro transcription system from tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum)-cultured cells (BY-2), and this system supported the basic activities of the three RNA polymerases (Pol I, Pol II, and Pol III). However, it was not suitable to study photosynthetic genes, because BY-2 cells have lost their photosynthetic activity. Therefore, Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) in vitro transcription systems were developed from green and etiolated suspension cells. Sufficient in vitro Pol II activity was detected after the minor modification of the nuclear soluble extracts preparation method; removal of vacuoles from protoplasts and L-ascorbic acid supplementation in the extraction buffer were particularly effective. Surprisingly, all four Arabidopsis Rubisco small subunit (rbcS-1A, rbcS-1B, rbcS-2B, and rbcS-3B) gene members were in vitro transcribed from the naked DNA templates without any light-dependent manner. However, clear light-inducible transcriptions were observed using chromatin template of rbcS-1A gene, which was prepared with a human nucleosome assembly protein 1 (hNAP1) and HeLa histones. This suggested that a key determinant of light-dependency through the rbcS gene transcription was a higher order of DNA structure (i.e. chromatin).