Abstract
Plants are unable to physically escape environmental constraints and have, therefore, evolved a range of molecular and physiological mechanisms to maximize survival in an ever-changing environment. Among these, the post-translational modification of ubiquitination has emerged as an important mechanism to understand and improve the stress response. The ubiquitination of a given protein can change its abundance (through degradation), alter its localization, or even modulate its activity. Hence, ubiquitination increases the plasticity of the plant proteome in response to different environmental cues and can contribute to improve stress tolerance. Although ubiquitination is mediated by different enzymes, in this review, we focus on the importance of E3-ubiquitin ligases, which interact with the target proteins and are, therefore, highly associated with the mechanism specificity. We discuss their involvement in abiotic stress response and place them as putative candidates for ubiquitination-based development of stress-tolerant crops. This review covers recent developments in this field using rice as a reference for crops, highlighting the questions still unanswered.
Highlights
Plants, as sessile organisms, have evolved myriad complex and efficient molecular and physiological mechanisms to cope with the various environmental constraints that affect their growth and development (Ahmad and Prasad, 2012)
Ubiquitination is mediated by different enzymes, in this review, we focus on the importance of E3-ubiquitin ligases, which interact with the target proteins and are, highly associated with the mechanism specificity
The E3-ubiquitin ligase role in MT regulation seems to be transversal to cellular processes and to species, such as hypocotyl elongation (Lian et al, 2017), formation of mammalian spermatozoa (Iyengar et al, 2011), cell migration (Courtheoux et al, 2016), cell division (Maerki et al, 2009; Venuto and Merla, 2019), and viral infection (Liu et al, 2010)
Summary
As sessile organisms, have evolved myriad complex and efficient molecular and physiological mechanisms to cope with the various environmental constraints that affect their growth and development (Ahmad and Prasad, 2012). During the last two decades, several rice E3-ubiquitin ligases and their interacting proteins have been associated with drought response in plants. Oryza sativa RING domain-containing protein 1 (OsRDCP1) is a RING E3-ubiquitin ligase upregulated by drought at a transcriptional level and whose overexpression enhances tolerance to severe water deficit in rice (Bae et al, 2011).
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