Abstract
Due to their sessile lifestyle, plants are especially exposed to various stresses, including genotoxic stress, which results in altered genome integrity. Upon the detection of DNA damage, distinct cellular responses lead to cell cycle arrest and the induction of DNA repair mechanisms. Interestingly, it has been shown that some cell cycle regulators are not only required for meristem activity and plant development but are also key to cope with the occurrence of DNA lesions. In this review, we first summarize some important regulatory steps of the plant cell cycle and present a brief overview of the DNA damage response (DDR) mechanisms. Then, the role played by some cell cycle regulators at the interface between the cell cycle and DNA damage responses is discussed more specifically.
Highlights
Most multicellular organisms share the same origin, a single fertilized cell
Orchestrated cell cycle events are maintained by the oscillatory transcription of phase-specific genes [56,57]. Those regulations depend on one hand, on the control of a set of early cell cycle (G1) genes by the canonical E2F transcription factors (TF) combined to their dimerization partner (DP), and on the other hand, on the regulation by the MYB3R TF family of a set of late cell cycle (G2) genes, containing Mphase specific activator (MSA) cis-elements. Those TF activities are themselves controlled by their sequential interactions with the multifunctional master regulator, known as RETINOBLASTOMA-RELATED 1 (RBR1) in Arabidopsis [59,60]
Signal and modulate effector protein activity through their phosphorylation action. This DNA damage signal can be either direct or relayed by Chk2 and Chk1, two other checkpoint kinases absent in plants [74], to activate the central effector, the tumour suppressor protein p53, a transcription factor able to control around hundreds of genes in response to DNA damage [79]
Summary
Most multicellular organisms share the same origin, a single fertilized cell. Through the so-called cell cycle, this cell will divide repeatedly to produce the billions of cells constituting the entire organism. Living organisms are continuously subject to different types of stress, either endogenous or exogenous, and some of them can compromise the structural or functional integrity of genomes and induce DNA damage. These are referred to as genotoxic stress [1,2,3]. The plant cell cycle machinery relies on an excessive number of cell cycle regulators allowing a fine-tuning of the mitotic cycle progression and a tightly-controlled switch toward the endocycle (or endoreduplication) In this alternative cell cycle, cells duplicate their DNA without cell division, resulting in an increase of their ploidy level. We briefly describe the regulation of cell cycle focusing on plant particular features to better highlight novel functions in the DNA damage repair of certain key cell cycle players
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