Aromatic amino acid biosynthetic enzymes

Abstract

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

1 . An isolated polynucleotide comprising: 
 (a) a nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide having chorismate mutase activity, wherein the amino acid sequence of the polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:16 have at least 80% sequence identity based on the Clustal pairwise alignment method with 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 amino acid sequence of the polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:16 have at least 90% sequence identity based on the Clustal alignment method.  
     
     
         3 . The polynucleotide of  claim 1 , wherein the amino acid sequence of the polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:16 have at least 95% sequence identity based on the Clustal alignment method.  
     
     
         4 . The polynucleotide of  claim 1  wherein the polypeptide comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:16.  
     
     
         5 . The polynucleotide of  claim 1 , wherein the nucleotide sequence comprises the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:15.  
     
     
         6 . A recombinant DNA construct comprising the polynucleotide of  claim 1  operably linked to at least one regulatory sequence.  
     
     
         7 . A cell comprising the polynucleotide of  claim 1 .  
     
     
         8 . The cell of  claim 7 , wherein the cell is selected from the group consisting of a yeast cell, a bacterial cell and a plant cell.  
     
     
         9 . A transgenic plant comprising the polynucleotide of  claim 1 .  
     
     
         10 . A virus comprising the polynucleotide of  claim 1 .  
     
     
         11 . A method for transforming a cell comprising introducing into a cell the polynucleotide of  claim 1 .  
     
     
         12 . A method for producing a transgenic plant comprising (a) transforming a plant cell with the polynucleotide of  claim 1  and (b) regenerating a plant from the transformed plant cell.  
     
     
         13 . A vector comprising the polynucleotide of  claim 1 .  
     
     
         14 . A seed comprising the recombinant DNA construct of  claim 6.