Andrew’s paper on the mechanism for dual-targeting HEMERA to plastids and the nucleus has been published in Plant Physiology.

Andrew Nevarez and Yongjian Qiu published their report in Plant Physiology on the mechanism of dual-targeting of HEMERA/pTAC12 to plastids and the nucleus. Their study suggests that the nuclear localization of HEMERA is mediated by a plastid-to-nucleus protein translocation mechanism – HEMERA is localized to plastids first before relocated to the nucleus. A similar mechanism was reported for WHIRLY1 in tobacco by Karin Krupinska and colleagues (Isemer R. et al. 2012 FEBS Lett 586(1):85-8). However, the mechanism of plastid-to-nuclear protein translocation is still largely unknown. Our study indicates that a plastid-to-nucleus retrograde protein translocation mechanism exists in Arabidopsis.  Chan Yul Yoo is a co-author of the paper. We collaborated with Dr. Danny Schnell’s lab at Michigan State for the studies on HEMERA’s chloroplast import. We would also like to thank Dr. Philip Benfey for supervising Andrew’s work in the past year.

Congratulations to all authors!  You can read the article here.