Yeast Gene Construction and Cloning of Knockout Cassette

To study the role of two genes sea4 and pca1 we constructed the knockout of both the genes. Metacaspases are the distant relatives of animal caspases found in plants, protozoa,and fungi. These metacaspases are also involved in regulating the development and environmentally induced programmed cell death. It has been approximately 10 years since metacaspases were discovered. During this time the pendulum has shifted from naive hopes that metacaspases are responsible for cell death events and associated caspase like activities in plants and other non metazoans to well grounded view that metacaspases are the distinct group of enzymes that can regulate various biological processes including PCD (programmes cell death). Metacaspases control vital cellular functions in protozoa, fungi and plants development of approaches for artificial regulation of metacaspases can find important practical application in the improvement of growth and disease resistance characteristics.