Sensing endoplasmic reticulum redox state by ethylene receptors.
Hao D, Xiao Z, Yan W, Pan C, Yang Y
Plant Signaling
When your tomatoes or houseplants suffer from waterlogged roots or deep shade, this newly discovered stress-sensing switch inside their cells is part of what helps them survive — and understanding it could lead to more resilient varieties that bounce back from flooding or low-light conditions.
Plants use a hormone called ethylene to trigger all kinds of responses — fruit ripening, leaf drop, stress reactions. Scientists found that the proteins plants use to detect ethylene also moonlight as sensors for the internal chemical balance of a tiny factory inside plant cells. When that internal balance tips toward being too 'reducing' (like a chemical version of rust being stripped away), the sensors switch on even without ethylene being present. Surprisingly, this chemical-balance sensing appears to be an older trick than ethylene sensing itself, hinting it's a deeply conserved survival tool.
Key Findings
Ethylene receptors form disulfide-linked dimers in the ER lumen that are broken apart by reductive stress — not by ethylene itself — activating downstream ethylene signaling
Manipulating disulfide bond formation in the receptor ETR1 improved plant resilience under both hypoxia (low oxygen, e.g. flooding) and during photomorphogenesis (transitioning from dark to light growth)
ER redox sensing by receptors appears to be an ancestral function that predates the major evolution of ethylene biosynthesis in plants
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists discovered that ethylene receptors in plants don't just detect the hormone ethylene — they also sense the chemical environment inside a cellular compartment called the endoplasmic reticulum, and this sensing mechanism may actually be more ancient than ethylene signaling itself.
Abstract Preview
Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) redox homeostasis is critical for ER functionality and is implicated in various human diseases, yet its physiological significance in plants remains largely elusive. Ethy...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Was this useful?
Want to tell us more? (optional)
Thanks for the note!
Something went wrong — please try again.
Too many submissions. Try again in an hour.
Chloroplast Genome Editing Eliminates Gluten Immunogenicity in Triticum aestivum
It could mean that people with celiac disease — roughly 1 in 100 worldwide — may one day safely eat bread made from real wheat, without sacrificing the taste...