Isolation of a new mitotic-like cyclin from Arabidopsis: complementation of a yeast cyclin mutant with a plant cyclin.

Cyclins, a large family of proteins, are the regulatory subunits of cyclin-dependent protein kinase that are essential activators of cell cycle progression in eukaryotes. Here we report isolation of a new cyclin cDNA (cyclbAt) from Arabibopsis cDNA libraries using polymerase chain reaction amplified cyclin-box sequences as probes. The deduced amino acid sequence of the isolated cDNA showed the highest sequence similarity with mitotic cyclins. However, the nucleotide and predicted amino acid sequence of cyclbAt is different from five other mitotic-like cyclins that have recently been isolated from the same system, indicating that it is a new mitotic-like cyclin. These results, together with previous reports, suggest that there are at least six different mitotic-like cyclins in Arabidopsis. Expression of cyclbAt in yeast G1 cyclin-minus mutant (DL1) rescued the cyclin-minus phenotype, demonstrating, that plant mitotic-like cyclin can complement cyclin function in yeast. Analysis of expression of cyclbAt in different tissues by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction using primers corresponding to a unique region of the cDNA showed that cyclbAt is differentially expressed in different tissues with highest expression in flowers and no detectable expression in leaves.