A hormone-responsive C1-domain-containing protein At5g17960 mediates stress response in Arabidopsis thaliana

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 10; no. 1; p. e0115418
• Main Authors: Bhaskar, Ravindran Vijay, Mohanty, Bijayalaxmi, Verma, Vivek, Wijaya, Edward, Kumar, Prakash P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 15.01.2015; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Abiotic stress; Abscisic acid; Amino Acids, Cyclic - pharmacology; Analysis; Arabidopsis; Arabidopsis - genetics; Arabidopsis - metabolism; Arabidopsis Proteins - genetics; Arabidopsis Proteins - metabolism; Arabidopsis thaliana; Cloning; Deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA; Domains; Gene expression; Gene Expression Profiling; Gene Expression Regulation, Plant - drug effects; Genes; Genetic engineering; Hormones; International conferences; Kinases; Molecular biology; Phylogenetics; Phylogeny; Plant Growth Regulators - pharmacology; Plant hormones; Plant stress; Plants, Genetically Modified; Proteins; Regulatory sequences; Science; Seedlings; Seeds; Signal transduction; Stress response; Stress, Physiological - drug effects; Stress, Physiological - genetics; Stress, Physiological - physiology; Subgroups; Transcription; Transcription factors; Transgenic; Singapore
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0115418

Phytohormones play a critical role in mediating plant stress response. They employ a variety of proteins for coordinating such processes. In Arabidopsis thaliana, some members of a Cys-rich protein family known as C1-clan proteins were involved in stress response, but the actual function of the protein family is largely unknown. We studied At5g17960, a C1-clan protein member that possesses three unique C1 signature domains viz. C1_2, C1_3 and ZZ/PHD type. Additionally, we identified 72 other proteins in A. thaliana that contain all three unique signature domains. Subsequently, the 73 proteins were phylogenetically classified into IX subgroups. Promoter motif analysis of the 73 genes identified the presence of hormone-responsive and stress-responsive putative cis-regulatory elements. Furthermore, we observed that transcript levels of At5g17960 were induced in response to different hormones and stress treatments. At1g35610 and At3g13760, two other members of subgroup IV, also showed upregulation upon GA3, biotic and abiotic stress treatments. Moreover, seedlings of independent transgenic A. thaliana lines ectopically expressing or suppressing At5g17960 also showed differential regulation of several abiotic stress-responsive marker genes. Thus, our data suggest that C1-domain-containing proteins have a role to play in plant hormone-mediated stress responses, thereby assigning a putative function for the C1-clan protein family.