Magnesium chelatase

Abstract

This invention relates to an isolated nucleic acid fragment encoding a magnesium chelatase subunit. The invention also relates to the construction of a chimeric gene encoding all or a substantial portion of the magnesium chelatase subunit, in sense or antisense orientation, wherein expression of the chimeric gene results in production of altered levels of the magnesium chelatase subunit in a transformed host cell.

What is claimed is:  
     
         1 . An isolated polynucleotide comprising: 
 (a) a nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide having magnesium chelatase subunit CHLI activity, wherein the amino acid sequence of the polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:50 have at least 95% sequence identity based on the Clustal alignment method with multiple alignment default parameters of Gap Penalty=10, Gap Length Penalty=10, and pairwise alignment default parameters of Ktuple=1, Gap Penalty=3, Window=5 and Diagonals Saved=5, or    (b) the complement of the nucleotide sequence, wherein the complement and the nucleotide sequence contain the same number of nucleotides and are 100% complementary.    
     
     
         2 . The polynucleotide of  claim 1 , wherein the nucleotide sequence comprises the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:49.  
     
     
         3 . The polynucleotide of  claim 1 , wherein the polypeptide comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:50.  
     
     
         4 . A vector comprising the polynucleotide of  claim 1 .  
     
     
         5 . A recombinant DNA construct comprising the polynucleotide of  claim 1  operably linked to a regulatory sequence.  
     
     
         6 . A method for transforming a cell comprising transforming a cell with the polynucleotide of  claim 1 .  
     
     
         7 . A cell comprising the recombinant DNA construct of  claim 5 .  
     
     
         8 . A method for producing a plant comprising transforming a plant cell with the polynucleotide of  claim 1  and regenerating a plant from the transformed plant cell.  
     
     
         9 . A plant comprising the recombinant DNA construct of  claim 5 .  
     
     
         10 . A seed comprising the recombinant DNA construct of  claim 5.