Phosphatidic acid (PA) level increases during various stress conditions. However, the physiological roles of this lipid in stress response remain largely unknown. In this study, we report that PA induced leaf cell death and elevated the levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the whole leaf and single cells. To further elucidate the mechanism of PA-induced cell death, we then examined whether Rho-related small G protein (ROP) 2, which enhanced ROS production in an in vitro assay, is involved in PA-induced ROS production and cell death. In response to PA, transgenic leaves of Arabidopsis expressing a constitutively active rop2 mutant exhibited earlier cell death and higher levels of ROS than wild type (WT), whereas those expressing a dominant-negative rop2 mutant exhibited later cell death and lower ROS. However, in the absence of exogenous PA, no spontaneous cell death or elevated ROS was observed in constitutively active rop2 plants, suggesting that the activation of ROP GTPase alone is insufficient to activate the ROP-mediated ROS generation pathway. These results suggest that PA modulates an additional factor required for the active ROP-mediated ROS generation pathway. Therefore, PA may be an important regulator of ROP-regulated ROS generation and the cell death process during various stress and defense responses of plants.Phosphatidic acid (PA) is implicated in numerous stress responses of plants. Intracellular PA levels increase under various biotic and abiotic stress conditions, including pathogen elicitation (Young et al., 1996;van der Luit et al., 2000), wounding Wang, 1996, 1998; Lee et al., 1997), freezing (Welti et al., 2002), hyperosmotic stress (Munnik et al., 2000), and water deficit (Frank et al., 2000;Munnik et al., 2000). It is suggested that PA is a second messenger in a broad range of stress-signaling pathways in plants and mediates important responses to stresses (Munnik, 2001).PA has many regulatory functions in animal cells, including the regulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, protein kinase, phosphatase, lipid kinase, phospholipases, intracellular Ca 2ϩ levels, vesicle trafficking, cell proliferation, and cytoskeletal rearrangement (Liscovitch et al., 2000). This lipid also regulates a wide range of important cellular processes in plants, including regulation of ROS generation (Sang et al., 2001a), MAPK activity (Lee et al., 2001), K ϩ channels (Jacob et al., 1999), and actin organization (Lee et al., 2003). Therefore, PA is likely to be involved in numerous physiological processes in plants, including stomatal movement (Jacob et al., 1999), leaf senescence (Fan et al., 1997), various stress responses, and hormone signaling (for review, see Munnik, 2001). In vivo roles of PA in leaf senescence and stomatal closing movement were demonstrated using PLD␣ antisense plants; this mutant plant is delayed in ABA-and ethylene-induced senescence (Ryu and Wang, 1995; Fan et al., 1997;Zien et al., 2001) and in ABA-induced stomatal closing movement (Sang et al., 2001b).A potentia...