Plants use hydrogen sulfide to flip molecular switches across thousands of proteins
Romero LC, Carrillo R, Montesinos-Pereira D, Luque C, Aroca A
Plant Signaling
When frost threatens your seedlings or drought grips your garden, plants trigger a hydrogen sulfide cascade that reprograms thousands of proteins at once; understanding that cascade is the first step toward varieties bred to handle those stresses better.
Plants quietly produce small amounts of hydrogen sulfide and use it as a signaling chemical inside their cells. This gas attaches to thousands of different proteins and changes how they work, where they go, and what they do. Scientists have now catalogued more than 11,700 proteins that carry these tags, showing that hydrogen sulfide touches nearly every major process in a plant's life: growing seeds, fighting off disease, surviving cold, and coping with drought.
Key Findings
More than 11,700 plant proteins can be modified by hydrogen sulfide through persulfidation, making it one of the most widespread chemical tags identified in plant cells.
The thioredoxin protein system acts as a molecular eraser, removing persulfidation tags and maintaining the redox balance needed for healthy cell function.
Persulfidation regulates defense responses, cold tolerance, drought response, embryo development, and protein transport across both model and crop plant species.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Plants use hydrogen sulfide gas as an internal messenger, chemically tagging thousands of proteins to control how they respond to drought, cold, disease, and development. A new review maps this modification across more than 11,700 plant proteins, revealing hydrogen sulfide as a regulator woven into nearly every corner of plant biology.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Protein persulfidation: a ubiquitous modification regulating a broad spectrum of biological processes.
Hydrogen sulfide signaling occurs mainly through protein persulfidation, an important post-translational modification and a highly dynamic process in plants. Beyond enzyme activity, persulfidation ...
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