Meagher Laboratory

 

The Arabidopsis profilins fall into vegetative/constitutive

and reproductive (pollen specific) classes.

 

PRF1 & PRF2 are the most strongly expressed in vegetative organs and ovules and are not expressed in pollen. PRF3 is weakly expressed in a similar pattern.

PRF4 and 5 are most strongly expressed in pollen, but are very poorly expressed and often undetectable in ovlues, leaves, stems, or roots.

Accurate time estimates have not been made for divergence among the plant profilins. However, the existance of similar classes with similar expression patterns in maize, a monocot, suggests the branching between these two groups of profilins occured 200 to 400 million years ago.

  
   
Huang et al., 1996, Kandasamy et al., 2000