Inside-out and right-side-out plasma membrane vesicles from sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L.) leaves, prepared by aqueous two-phase partitioning, were used to localize donor and acceptor sites and to determine substrate affinities for plasma membrane-bound NADH dehydrogenase activities. NADH-ferricyanide and NADH-cytochrome c reductase activities were approx. 30% latent with inside-out vesicles and about 80% latent with right-side-out vesicles, indicating that both donor and acceptor sites for these activities are located on the cytoplasmic surface of the plasma membrane, and that a possible transplasma membrane electron transport would constitute only a minor proportion of the total activity.

A cDNA, BCA1, encoding a calmodulin-stimulated Ca²⁺-ATPase in the vacuolar membrane of cauliflower (Brassica oleracea) was isolated based on the sequence of tryptic peptides derived from the purified protein. The BCA1 cDNA shares sequence identity with animal plasma membrane Ca²⁺-ATPases and Arabidopsis thaliana ACA1, that encodes a putative Ca²⁺ pump in the chloroplast envelope. In contrast to the plasma membrane Ca²⁺-ATPases of animal cells, which have a calmodulin-binding domain situated in the carboxy-terminal end of the molecule, the calmodulin-binding domain of BCA1 is situated at the amino terminus of the enzyme.