Plants use a molecular switch to coordinate their two main stress alarms
Jiménez A, López-Martínez R, Cano-Yelo D, Sevilla F, Martí MC
Plant Signaling
When you see a plant recover from drought, heat, or pest damage, the speed and accuracy of that recovery depends on precisely this kind of molecular coordination happening invisibly in every leaf cell.
Plants have two major ways of sending emergency signals inside their cells: bursts of reactive oxygen molecules and pulses of calcium. These two alarm systems talk to each other constantly, and a group of proteins called thioredoxins acts like a reset button, switching proteins between active and inactive states to keep the signals in balance. Understanding this coordination explains how plants fine-tune their stress responses rather than overreacting or under-responding.
Key Findings
ROS and calcium act as sequential early signals: ROS and calcium spikes both occur rapidly after a stimulus, with calcium later feeding back to control ROS levels.
ROS modifies calcium-handling proteins via post-translational modifications, including oxidation, nitrosation, persulfidation, and glutathionylation, directly altering calcium transport and sensing.
Thioredoxins can reverse all four of these chemical modifications, making them a central reversible switch linking ROS and calcium signaling networks.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Plants use two chemical alarm systems, reactive oxygen and calcium pulses, to respond to stress. This review reveals how a family of proteins called thioredoxins acts as a bridge between these two systems, keeping their crosstalk precise and reversible.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Linking redox and calcium signaling via thioredoxins.
Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and calcium (Ca2+) are well-established second messengers in plants that transmit signals from an initial stimulus to initiate downstream cellular processes, and play ...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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Stress-response in plants encompasses the physiological and biochemical mechanisms that enable organisms to survive environmental challenges such as drought, heat, cold, or pathogen attack. Unlike mobile animals, plants employ a sophisticated arsenal of hormonal signaling, gene expression changes,
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