Work

ABI1 regulates carbon/nitrogen-nutrient signal transduction independent of ABA biosynthesis and canonical ABA signalling pathways in Arabidopsis

Year: 2015

Type: article

Abstract: Plants are able to sense and mediate the balance between carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) nutrient availability to optimize metabolism and growth, described as the C/N response. To clarify the C/N signalling mechanism, C/N-insensitive plants were obtained from an Arabidopsis FOX hunting population, which over-expresses full-length cDNAs for individuals. The resulting cni2-D (carbon/nitrogen insensitive 2-dominant) plant was found to overcome the post-germination growth checkpoint and to expand green cotyledons in disrupted high C/low N stress conditions. The CNI2 gene encodes ABI1, a phosphatase type 2C protein, which negatively regulates abscisic acid (ABA) signal transduction. Over-expressors of ABI1 were found to be insensitive to disrupted C/N stress, whereas the loss-of function mutant abi1-2 was hypersensitive, suggesting that ABI1 plays an essential role in the plant C/N response. By contrast, the C/N-dependent growth phenotype observed in wild-type plants was not associated with endogenous ABA content. Accordingly, the ABA-insensitive mutant abi1-1, which could not bind to the ABA-ABA receptor complex, was not insensitive and restored normal sensitivity to high C/low N stress. The canonical ABA signalling mutants abi4 and abi5 were also sensitive to disrupted C/N stress. Further gene expression analysis demonstrated that several genes in the SnRK2s and SnRK1s pathways are transcriptionally affected by high C/low N stress in wild-type plants regardless of the lack of increased endogenous ABA contents, whereas the expression of these genes were significantly suppressed in ABI1 over-expressors. Taken together, these results suggest direct cross-talk between C/N and non-canonical ABA signalling pathways, regulated by ABI1, in plants.

Source: Journal of Experimental Botany

DOI: 10.1093/jxb/erv086