THE UBIQUITIN-ENCODING MULTIGENE FAMILY OF FLAX, LINUM-USITATISSIMUM

Ubiquitin (Ubq), a 76-amino acid (aa) protein, is found in all eukaryotic organisms and is one of the most conserved proteins so far studied. It is implicated in many cellular processes. The Ubq-encoding genes (ubq) are generally present as a multigene family. In flax, we have estimated that this multigene family contains at the most ten members. The initial flax ubq sequences were isolated from a flax genomic library in lambda-EMBL4 using a heterologous Arabidopsis thaliana ubq probe. An 916-bp fragment from one of the phage clones was subcloned and sequenced. The aa sequence derived from the nucleotide sequence of this fragment is identical to that of other plant Ubqs. This fragment was then used to isolate additional flax ubq clones. In all, eleven phage lambda clones, which represent six members of the gene family, were restriction-mapped and characterized. These six members are represented as three monomers, three poly-Ubqs, one hexamer and two tetramers. They can be present at either a single locus (two of the monomers and one of the poly-Ubqs) or at two loci (the remaining three genes). The other four members of the family are yet to be cloned and characterized.