Arabidopsis kinome: after the casting

Abstract

Arabidopsis thaliana is used as a favourite experimental organism for many aspects of plant biology. We capitalized on the recently available Arabidopsis genome sequence and predicted proteome, to draw up a genome-scale protein serine/threonine kinase (PSTK) inventory. The PSTKs represent about 4% of the A. thaliana proteome. In this study, we provide a description of the content and diversity of the non-receptor PSTKs. These kinases have crucial functions in sensing, mediating and coordinating cellular responses to an extensive range of stimuli. A total of 369 predicted non receptor PSTKs were detailed: the Raf superfamily, the CMGC, CaMK, AGC and STE families, as well as a few small clades and orphan sequences. An extensive relationship analysis of these kinases allows us to classify the proteins in superfamilies, families, sub-families and groups. The classification provides a better knowledge of the characteristics shared by the different clades. We focused on the MAP kinase module elements, with particular attention to their docking sites for protein-protein interaction and their biological function. The large number of A. thaliana genes encoding kinases might have been achieved through successive rounds of gene and genome duplications. The evolution towards an increasing gene number suggests that functional redundancy plays an important role in plant genetic robustness.

Signaling Receptors for TGF-β Family Members

“…This family is rather small in mammals, with only 12 members, in contrast to the 58-member family of tyrosine kinase receptors (Heldin et al 2014). In contrast, plants have a large number of different serine/threonine kinase receptors (Champion et al 2004).…”

Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Signaling in Plant-Interacting Fungi: Distinct Messages from Conserved Messengers

“…In mammals, for instance, the Ime2 homolog, male germ cell-associated kinase (Mak), has an expression pattern that correlates with sexual development (Jinno et al, 1993). In Arabidopsis, three Mak-homologous kinases show overall sequence similarity to MAPKs and possess a -TEY-phosphorylation motif that is typically associated with extracellular signal-regulated kinase-type MAPKs (Tena et al, 2001;Champion et al, 2004). In the original plant MAPKs survey, Arabidopsis Mak-homologous kinases were not classified as true MAPKs because they show sequence relatedness to both MAPKs and CDC2-like PKs (Ichimura, 2002).…”

Uses for JNK: the Many and Varied Substrates of the c-Jun N-Terminal Kinases

“…Conserved sequence motifs have allowed the identification of 518 protein kinases within the human genome, with these being grouped into 20 families based on sequence similarities (205). Additional analyses are being increasingly undertaken with a range of eukaryotes and prokaryotes, revealing striking conservation of some protein kinases across a range of organisms as well as protein kinase family members specific to particular organisms (42,49,112,314).…”