Abstract
We investigated the effect of auxin and acetylcholine on the expression of the tomato expansin gene LeEXPA2, a specific expansin gene expressed in elongating tomato hypocotyl segments. Since auxin interferes with clathrin-mediated endocytosis, in order to regulate cellular and developmental responses we produced protoplasts from tomato elongating hypocotyls and followed the endocytotic marker, FM4-64, internalization in response to treatments. Tomato protoplasts were observed during auxin and acetylcholine treatments after transient expression of chimerical markers of volume-control related compartments such as vacuoles. Here we describe the contribution of auxin and acetylcholine to LeEXPA2 expression regulation and we support the hypothesis that a possible subcellular target of acetylcholine signal is the vesicular transport, shedding some light on the characterization of this small molecule as local mediator in the plant physiological response.
Highlights
Cell elongation is a process known to be dependent on auxin
Our research focuses on cell elongation with two main goals: to discriminate between the contribution of auxin and ACh on LeEXPA2 gene expression, and to identify the subcellular target of
We investigated the effect of different concentrations of ACh alone or combined with a constant amount of the synthetic auxin 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) on hypocotyl segment elongation (Figure 1)
Summary
Cell elongation is a process known to be dependent on auxin. it has been studied for decades the mechanism is still not completely unravelled, since the response of the cell to the elongation stimulus is integrated and highly complex [1,2]. Plants possess many homologous molecules that are similar to the neurotransmitters of the animal nervous system such as glutamate, GABA, serotonin, melatonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine [14,15,16,17,18,19]. The role of these molecules in plants is still far from understood [20,21,22,23]. Acetylcholine (ACh) seems to mediate various physiological processes, such as phytochrome-based signalling [28,29,30], water balance [31], cell swelling [32,33], stomatal movement [34,35], root-shoot signal transduction [36] and cell elongation [37,38]
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