Molecular mechanism of the elasticity of plant gene expression and signal transduction chains

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Plants have unique characteristics in various aspects in compared to animals, as they are composed of cells covered by thick cell walls. Plants cannot move in response to environmental changes, however, plants have developed characteristic strategy against environmental changes. This project was proposed to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying these unique characteristics. When the term of this project finished, we have had some confident results in some aspects as follows. First, we identified parB as one of auxin-regulated genes, which was found to encode glutathione S-transferase. This is the first case, in which any one of auxinregulated genes has been ascribed to apecific functions. We have also isolated acrA as another auxin-regulated gene, which was found to encode a beta-subunit-like protein of G proteins. This discovery opened new area, in which signal transduction chains mediated by protein kinase C are also involved in plant hormone-regulated phenomena, as the gene product of arcA is likely to be a receptor for activated C kinases. On the other hand, as for the signal transduction chains regarding phytopathogenic processes, a receptor for an elicitor was identified, while some aspects of phosphoinositide metabolisms was also elucidated. In this regard, regeneration of resistant plants against pathogenic fungi was also tried. It was also demonstrated that some specific gene product of virus genomes was involved in the acquisition of resistance of plants against virus infection. Thus, overall, this project attained some positive results in the field of plant molecular biology. As a kind of byproducts, tobacco BY-2 cells have been internationally recognized as model experimental materials in plants through the activity of researchers of this project, as it was established that the cell line grows very fast and can be synchronized in a strict sense and found to be useful for the analysis of basic aspects of plant cells.