Regulation of salt and ABA responses by CIPK14, a calcium sensor interacting protein kinase in Arabidopsis

Abstract

Calcium and protein kinase serve as the common mediators to regulate plant responses to multiple stresses including salt and ABA stimulus. Here we reported a novel protein kinase (CIPK14) that regulated the responses to ABA treatment and salt stress in Arabidopsis. CIPK14 transcripts, capable been checked in roots, stems, leaves and flowers, were highly expressed in flowers and roots. CIPK14 was induced by ABA and salt treatments. The disruption of CIPK14 altered the transcriptional pattern of a gene marker line related to ABA and salt responses, and the results suggested that CIPK14 probably was responsible to the control of the salt and ABA responses. Comparing with wild types, the lines inserted with the T-DNA in which CIPK14 gene expression was knocked out were also more sensitive to ABA and salt stimulus, showing low germination rate and the less root elongation. While, when these conditioned seeds were treated with norflurazon, their germination percentages could recover to a certain extent. We also found that exogenous calcium could have an effect on the transcription of CIPK14 under ABA and salt treatments, and it seemed that calcium ion might work upstream CIPK14 to regulate the plant response to ABA and salt response.

Overexpression of <em>AmRosea1 </em>Gene Confers Drought and Salt Tolerance in Rice

“…AtCIPK14 is induced by salt and ABA treatments, and regulates the expression of DREB1A/DREB2A, RD29A/RD29B, RAB18 and RD22. T-DNA lines in which AtCIPK14 was knocked out were sensitive to salt and ABA treatments [40]. Transgenic tobaccos overexpressing TaCIPK14, the sequence of which is significantly similar to OsCIPK14, exhibited significant salinity tolerance, because of higher catalase activity, decreased H2O2 content and decreased Na + content under salt stress [41].…”

Structural insights into ABA perception and signalling: structure of ABA receptor PYR1

“…Similarly, transcription levels of ABA markers genes were comparable to those in wild type (Gao et al, 2007;Guo et al, 2008). Taken together, these results indicate that GCR2 is not required for ABA responses in these processes.…”

“…Moreover, CIPK3 appears to generally modulate cold and salt-induced gene expression, but not drought-induced gene expression, presenting itself as a cross-talk "node" among different stress signals (Kim et al, 2003). CIPK14 has also been reported to show hypersensitivity in seed germination and root growth (Qin et al, 2008). (Cheong et al, 2007) (see summary of phenotypes in Table 1).…”

“…Experiments suggesting the extracellular perception of the hormone (Anderson et al, 1994), together with the implication of components of the heterotrimeric G-protein complex in ABA responses (Pandey et al, 2006), led the authors to look for putative works examining the role of GCR2 in ABA signalling have reported opposite results contradicting the conclusion of Liu et al (2007) and setting controversy around this receptor (Gao et al, 2007;Johnson et al, 2007;Guo et al, 2008;Risk et al, 2009).…”

“…GCR2 seemed to fit all the requirements, since it was predicted to be a membrane protein with seven transmembrane helices, the gcr2 mutant was shown to exhibit ABA insensitive phenotypes in all known ABA responses and it was reported to interact with the Gα-subunit protein GPA1. However, four other works published between 2007 and 2009 have raised questions about the function of GCR2 in ABA signalling (Gao et al, 2007;Johnston et al, 2007;Guo et al, 2008;Risk et al, 2009). Apparently, GCR2 is not a seven-transmembrane protein as predicted.…”