Redundancy of signal transduction elements, parallelisms of pathways, and conditionally alternative mechanisms generate a robust network and system that only tentatively can be assessed by use of single-site mutants. Antioxid. Redox Signal. 00, 000-000.

β-carbonic anhydrases (βCA) accelerate the equilibrium formation between CO2 and carbonate. Two plant βCA isoforms are targeted to the chloroplast and represent abundant proteins in the range of >1% of chloroplast protein. While their function in gas exchange and photosynthesis is well-characterized in carbon concentrating mechanisms of cyanobacteria and plants with C4-photosynthesis, their function in plants with C3-photosynthesis is less clear. The presence of conserved and surface-exposed cysteinyl residues in the βCA-structure urged to the question whether βCA is subject to redox regulation. Activity measurements revealed reductive activation of βCA1, whereas oxidized βCA1 was inactive. Mutation of cysteinyl residues decreased βCA1 activity, in particular C280S, C167S, C230S, and C257S. High concentrations of dithiothreitol or low amounts of reduced thioredoxins (TRXs) activated oxidized βCA1. TRX-y1 and TRX-y2 most efficiently activated βCA1, followed by TRX-f1 and f2 and NADPH-dependent TRX reductase C (NTRC). High light irradiation did not enhance βCA activity in wildtype Arabidopsis, but surprisingly in βca1 knockout plants, indicating light-dependent regulation. The results assign a role of βCA within the thiol redox regulatory network of the chloroplast.

Canonical retrograde signaling is the transmission of information from organelles to the nucleus. Discrepancies between protein accumulation and transcript abundance in response to oxidative stress were suggestive of protein translation responding to retrograde signaling. Here we uncover multiple components of a translation-dependent retrograde signaling pathway that impact translation efficiency and gene expression, including the kinases, MPK6 and the SnRK1 subunit, AKIN10. Global ribosome foot-printing demonstrated rapid differential loading of 939 of transcripts from polyribosomes within 10 min after transfer from Low to High-light. Translationally regulated transcripts shared motifs in their 5`-UTR that act as binding sites for RBPs such as GAPC. The Stress Associated Proteins 2 and 3 carry such motifs in their UTRs and interact with the calcium sensor Calmodulin-like 49, relocating to the nucleus to co-regulate a translation-dependent transcriptional response. Translation dependent retrograde signaling bifurcates into a direct translational circuit and a translation-reliant nuclear circuit synchronizing translation, nuclear and anterograde response pathways, which may serve as a just in time-provision of needed proteins to the plastids.

Background Post-translational modifications (PTM) of amino acid (AA) side chains in peptides control protein structure and functionality. PTMs depend on the specific AA characteristics. The reactivity of cysteine thiol-based PTMs are unique among all proteinaceous AA. This pipeline aims to ease the identification of conserved AA of polypeptides or protein families based on the phylogenetic occurrence in the plant kingdom. The tool is customizable to include any species. The degree of AA conservation is taken as indicator for structural and functional significance, especially for PTM-based regulation. Further, this pipeline tool gives insight into the evolution of these potentially regulatory important peptides. Results The web-based or stand-alone pipeline tool Conserved Cysteine Finder (ConCysFind) was developed to identify conserved AA such as cysteine, tryptophan, serine, threonine, tyrosin and methionine. ConCysFind evaluates multiple alignments considering the proteome of 21 plant species. This exemplar study focused on Cys as evolutionarily conserved target for multiple redox PTM. Phylogenetic trees and tables with the compressed results of the scoring algorithm are generated for each Cys in the query polypeptide. Analysis of 33 translation elongation and release factors alongside of known redox proteins from Arabidopsis thaliana for conserved Cys residues confirmed the suitability of the tool for identifying conserved and functional PTM sites. Exemplarily, the redox sensitivity of cysteines in the eukaryotic release factor 1-1 (eRF1-1) was experimentally validated. Conclusion ConCysFind is a valuable tool for prediction of new potential protein PTM targets in a broad spectrum of species, based on conserved AA throughout the plant kingdom. The identified targets were successfully verified through protein biochemical assays. The pipeline is universally applicable to other phylogenetic branches by customization of the database.