Molecular cloning of a centrin homolog from Marsilea vestita and evidence for its translational control during spermiogenesis

Spermiogenesis in the water fern Marsilea vestita is a process that reaches completion 11 h after dry microspores are immersed in an aqueous medium at 20 degrees C. Each microspore produces 32 spermatozoids and each spermatoz oid has a coiled cell body and approximately 140 cilia. The spermatids make basal bodies de novo, from a structure known as a blepharoplast. From the onset of development, the spores contain a large quantity of protein and st ored mRNA. We have found previously that centrin, a protein involved in the function of microtubule organizing centers and present in association with basal bodies in motile cells, is made in large quantity approximately 4 h after the microspores are placed into liquid medium. In this paper, we show that a centrin cDNA (MvCen1) we isolated from M. vestita closely resembles centrin cDNAs from other eukaryotic organisms, MvCen1, synthesized in Esch erichia coli as a GST-fusion protein, reacted with anti-centrin monoclonal antibodies on immunoblots. Northern blot analysis demonstrates that centrin mRNA is present in the dry microspore at the time of imbibition, at levels that remain constant over 10 h of development and are unaffected by treatm ent of spores with alpha-amanitin. The centrin transcripts, stored in dry m icrospores, cannot be translated in vitro for at least 30 min after imbibit ion.