Autophagy and stress tolerance in plants: the central role of ATG18-a review.
Wei S, Chen Z, Xu C, Qian X, Tang Q
Climate Adaptation
Understanding how plants cope with stress at the cellular level could lead to hardier crops and garden plants that better survive drought, disease, and climate extremes — meaning more food security and greener gardens even as conditions get tougher.
Plants have a built-in system that acts like a recycling program — when things go wrong, like during a drought or a pest attack, cells break down and reuse their own damaged parts to stay alive. Scientists reviewed how this system works and found that one particular protein acts as a master switch, turning the recycling process on when the plant is under stress. Understanding this switch could help us breed or grow plants that are much tougher and more resilient.
Key Findings
ATG18 functions as a critical phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate (PI3P) effector, making it indispensable for plant survival under both biotic (pest/pathogen) and abiotic (drought/heat) stress
Three distinct autophagic pathways operate in plants, all coordinated through a shared core ATG machinery that ATG18 helps regulate
Autophagy is an evolutionarily ancient and conserved system, meaning the stress-survival mechanisms identified in this review are broadly applicable across diverse plant species
chevron_right Technical Summary
Plants have an internal recycling system called autophagy that helps them survive drought, disease, and other stresses. This review highlights a key protein, ATG18, as a central player that coordinates this cleanup process, making it essential for plant resilience.
Abstract Preview
Autophagy is an ancient, conserved system that underpins plant survival by recycling damaged organelles and nutrients under biotic and abiotic stress. This review synthesizes recent advances in thr...
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