Protein ubiquitination, plant development and abiotic stress tolerance

泛素化包括附着一种叫做泛素的小蛋白质，以选择目标蛋白质。附着的泛素充当“标签”，将蛋白质送到蛋白酶体复合体，在那里蛋白质被降解。泛素蛋白酶体系统（UPS）确保重要的蛋白质在正确的时间和正确的数量出现在细胞内正确的位置。植物利用UPS来改变细胞中的蛋白质含量，从而在紧张的环境条件下持续生长、发育和生存。环境压力，如干旱和土壤盐分增加，对植物生长发育产生负面影响，是每年作物损失的主要原因。解决这一问题的一种方法是开发能够在不利生长条件下获得最佳生长和产量的耐胁迫作物品种。在开发这些新作物之前，我们必须首先详细了解植物为在这些事件中生存所经历的变化。我们的研究通过破译植物如何利用UPS来促进细胞的变化，使它们在紧张的环境中茁壮成长来解决这个问题。这项研究将有助于鉴定与抗逆性相关的新基因，并深入了解如何操纵UPS为植物提供生存优势。这些结果将为新作物品种的开发提供相关信息，从而为加拿大的农业提供巨大的经济效益。

Ubiquitination involves the attachment of a small protein, named ubiquitin, to select target proteins. The attached ubiquitin serves as a 'tag' which sends the protein to the proteasome complex where it gets degraded. The ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) ensures that important proteins are in the right place at the right time and in the right amounts within the cell. Plants use the UPS to make changes to protein content in the cell and this enables continued growth, development and survival during stressful environmental conditions. Environmental stresses, such as drought and increased soil salinity, negatively impact plant growth and development and are the major cause of crop loss each year. One approach to solving this problem is to develop stress tolerant crop varieties that are capable of optimal growth and production during unfavourable growing conditions. Before these new crops can be developed we must first have a detailed understanding of the changes that plants undergo to survive these episodes. Our research addresses this by deciphering how plants use the UPS to promote changes in the cell allowing them to thrive within a stressful environment. The research will lead to the identification of novel genes associated with stress-tolerance and give insight into how the UPS can possibly be manipulated to provide a survival advantage to plants. These results will provide pertinent information in the development of new crop varieties, hence providing a huge economic benefit to the agricultural industry in Canada.