Figure 1

eIF3h controls the translational efficiency of the AtbZip11 leader in stable, transgenic, reporter gene expression cassettes. (a) Schematic of the reporter gene T-DNA structure. The efficiency of translation initiation on a given 5' leader sequence is measured by comparing the activity of the associated firefly (Fluc) reporter gene with the activity of the Renilla luciferase (Rluc) reference gene, which is expressed under the control of the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter (35S) and the generic 5' leader sequence from tobacco etch virus (TL). (b) Translational efficiency of the AtbZip11 (ATB2) leader in wild-type (WT) and eif3h mutant seedlings. Seedlings were germinated for nine days on solid agar medium in the light. The figure shows raw Fluc/Rluc activity ratios from seven individual experiments conducted with one transgenic line. The data are representative of other raw data that underlie Figure 1c-e and Figure 2. (c) Translational efficiency of the AtbZip11 leader in wild-type (WT) and eif3h mutant seedlings. All six independent transgenic lines examined are shown. The bars indicate Fluc/Rluc ratios (left y-axis), while the triangles show the ratio of translational efficiency between wild-type (Wt) and mutant plants (right y-axis). The Wt/eif3h bracket between 0.5 and 1.5 is highlighted in gray to facilitate comparison between panels. SE, standard error. (d) Translational efficiency of the tobacco etch virus leader (TL) in wild-type (Wt) and eif3h mutant seedlings. Data from five lines are displayed as for (c). (e) Translational efficiency of the leader of the Arabidopsis LHY (At1g01060) gene. Fluc/Rluc bars for line 7 are displayed at 10% of the original values.