An Antiviral Protein Having Deoxyribonuclease and Ribonuclease Activity from Leaves of the Post-flowering Stage of Celosia cristata

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M. Begam^*, S. Narwal, S. Roy, S. Kumar, M. L. Lodha, and H. C. Kapoor

Division of Biochemistry, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi-110012, India; E-mail: mb_bioc@yahoo.com

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received November 18, 2004; Revision received April 6, 2005

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An antiviral protein named CCP-27 was purified from the leaves of Celosia cristata at the post-flowering stage by anion-exchange, cation-exchange, and gel-filtration chromatography. It exhibited resistance against sunnhemp rosette virus in its test host Cyamopsis tetragonoloba. It also exhibited deoxyribonuclease activity against supercoiled pBlueScript SK⁺ plasmid DNA. It was found to nick supercoiled DNA into nicked circular form at lower protein concentration followed by nicked to linear form conversion at higher protein concentration. CCP-27 also possesses strong ribonuclease activity against Torula yeast rRNA.

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KEY WORDS: Celosia cristata, antiviral proteins, ribosome inactivating protein, DNase activity, RNase activity

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297906130074

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