To evaluate the impact of suppressing inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (InsP 3 ) in plants, tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) cells were transformed with the human type I inositol polyphosphate 5-phosphatase (InsP 5-ptase), an enzyme which specifically hydrolyzes InsP 3 . The transgenic cell lines showed a 12-to 25-fold increase in InsP 5-ptase activity in vitro and a 60% to 80% reduction in basal InsP 3 compared with wild-type cells. Stimulation with Mas-7, a synthetic analog of the wasp venom peptide mastoparan, resulted in an approximately 2-fold increase in InsP 3 in both wild-type and transgenic cells. However, even with stimulation, InsP 3 levels in the transgenic cells did not reach wild-type basal values, suggesting that InsP 3 signaling is compromised. Analysis of whole-cell lipids indicated that phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PtdInsP 2 ), the lipid precursor of InsP 3 , was greatly reduced in the transgenic cells. In vitro assays of enzymes involved in PtdInsP 2 metabolism showed that the activity of the PtdInsP 2 -hydrolyzing enzyme phospholipase C was not significantly altered in the transgenic cells. In contrast, the activity of the plasma membrane PtdInsP 5 kinase was increased by approximately 3-fold in the transgenic cells. In vivo labeling studies revealed a greater incorporation of 32 P into PtdInsP 2 in the transgenic cells compared with the wild type, indicating that the rate of PtdInsP 2 synthesis was increased. These studies show that the constitutive expression of the human type I InsP 5-ptase in tobacco cells leads to an up-regulation of the phosphoinositide pathway and highlight the importance of PtdInsP 2 synthesis as a regulatory step in this system.In plants the phosphoinositide (PI) pathway has been implicated in the transduction of signals after a multitude of stimuli (Drøbak, 1992; Munnik et al., 1998a;Stevenson et al., 2000). Upon stimulation, the membrane-associated phospholipid, phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PtdInsP 2 ), is hydrolyzed by phospholipase C (PLC) to produce inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (InsP 3 ) and diacylglycerol (Berridge, 1993). InsP 3 can act as a soluble second messenger to mediate the release of Ca 2ϩ from intracellular stores, such as the vacuole (for review, see Sanders et al., 1999). Furthermore, because InsP 3 can travel between cells through plasmodesmatal connections (Tucker and Boss, 1996), it fulfills the requirements for a rapidly diffusible signaling molecule in both intraand intercellular signal propagation.Rapid transient increases in InsP 3 have been demonstrated in various plant tissues in response to environmental stimuli and chemical effectors, including hyperosmotic stress (Srivastava et al., 1989; Heilmann et al., 1999 Heilmann et al., , 2001 DeWald et al., 2001;Takahashi et al., 2001), salinity (Drøbak and Watkins, 2000), cold shock (Smolenska-Sym and Kacperska, 1996), oligogalacturonide elicitors (Legendre et al., 1993), fusicoccin (Aducci and Marra, 1990), mastoparan (Legendre et al., 1993; Drøbak and Watkins, 1994; Cho et a...