Prof. Jean-David Rochaix from University of Geneva in Switzerland paid a visit to Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHB) on June 4th, 2015.

Prof. Jean-David Rochaix from University of Geneva in Switzerland paid a visit to Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHB) on June 4^th, 2015. During his visit, Prof. Rochaix gave a lecture with the title of “Functional analysis of essential chloroplast genes through conditional plastid gene repression: new insights into chloroplast signaling”.  

Prof. Rochaix’s research interests are mainly in the plastid gene repression and the production of antibody and vaccine with chloroplast which was called “green plant”. In his lecture, Prof. Rochaix introduced their pioneering technology which is used to knock out the death gene of chloroplast slowly with vitamin inhibiting riboswitch, and which is also used in studying the function of proteolysis C1pP1 of chloroplast.  

They found that the knock of C1pP1 would result in up-regulation of chloroplast mRNA which compensate the function that lack of C1pP1. Meanwhile, the protein leval of molecular chaperone encoding by karyogene and ubiquitin-related protein degration system is increased, which was similar with “Protein quality control” in endoplasmic reticulum. Prof. Rochaix then proposed that similar mechanism of “Protein quality control” might exist in chloroplast and signal from chloroplast could also regulate the expression of genes in cell nucleus.