Molecular characterization of CER2, an Arabidopsis gene involved in cuticular wax accumulation

Cuticular waxes are complex mixtures of very long chain fatty acids and their derivatives that cover plant surfaces. Mutants of the ECERIFERUM2 {cer2) gene of Arabidopsis condition bright green stems and siliques, indicative of the relatively low abundance of the cuticular wax crystals that comprise the wax bloom on wild-type plants. We cloned the CER2 gene via chromosome walking. Three lines of evidence establish that the cloned sequence represents the CER2 gene: (1) this sequence is capable of complementing the cer2 mutant phenotype in transgenic plants; (2) the corresponding DNA sequence isolated from plants homozygous for the cer2-2 mutant allele contains a sequence polymorphism that generates a premature stop codon; and (3) the deduced CER2 protein sequence exhibits sequence similarity to that of a maize gene (glossy2) that is also involved in cuticular wax •Reprinted with permission of The Plant Cell, 1996, 8:1291-1304. 2Graduate student and primary researcher and author. Interdepartmental Genetics Program, Iowa State University. ^Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Iowa State University. ^Associate Professor, Departments of Agronomy, and Zoology and Genetics, Iowa State University. ^Author for correspondence