Abstract

Plants employ sophisticated mechanisms to recycle intracellular constituents needed for growth, development, and survival under nutrient-limiting conditions. Autophagy is one important route in which cytoplasm and organelles are sequestered in bulk into vesicles and subsequently delivered to the vacuole for breakdown by resident hydrolases. The formation and trafficking of autophagic vesicles are directed in part by associated conjugation cascades that couple the AUTOPHAGY-RELATED8 (ATG8) and ATG12 proteins to their respective targets, phosphatidylethanolamine and the ATG5 protein. To help understand the importance of autophagy to nutrient remobilization in cereals, we describe here the ATG8/12 conjugation cascades in maize (Zea mays) and examine their dynamics during development, leaf senescence, and nitrogen and fixed-carbon starvation. From searches of the maize genomic sequence using Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and rice (Oryza sativa) counterparts as queries, we identified orthologous loci encoding all components necessary for ATG8/12 conjugation, including a five-member gene family expressing ATG8. Alternative splicing was evident for almost all Atg transcripts, which could have important regulatory consequences. In addition to free ATG8, its membrane-associated, lipidated form was detected in many maize tissues, suggesting that its conjugation cascade is active throughout the plant at most, if not all, developmental stages. Levels of Atg transcripts and/or the ATG8-phosphatidylethanolamine adduct increase during leaf senescence and nitrogen and fixed-carbon limitations, indicating that autophagy plays a key role in nutrient remobilization. The description of the maize ATG system now provides a battery of molecular and biochemical tools to study autophagy in this crop under field conditions.

Highlights

  • Plants employ sophisticated mechanisms to recycle intracellular constituents needed for growth, development, and survival under nutrient-limiting conditions

  • As the first step toward understanding the importance of autophagy in crops, we describe here a collection of components that participate in the ATG8/12 conjugation cascades in both rice (Oryza sativa) and maize (Zea mays) and characterize the expression of the maize Atg genes and the lipidation of ATG8 during development and in response to nutrient limitations

  • Previous genome searches of Arabidopsis identified a suite of proteins structurally and functionally related to many ATG components present in yeast (Thompson and Vierstra, 2005; Bassham, 2007)

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Summary

Introduction

Plants employ sophisticated mechanisms to recycle intracellular constituents needed for growth, development, and survival under nutrient-limiting conditions. Previous studies with Arabidopsis demonstrated that the genes encoding the ATG8/12 conjugation cascades are ubiquitously expressed, with senescence and nutrient limitations increasing transcript abundance (Contento et al, 2004; Yoshimoto et al, 2004; Buchanan-Wollaston et al, 2005; Slavikovaet al., 2005; Thompson et al, 2005; Rose et al, 2006; van der Graaff et al, 2006; Osuna et al, 2007; Peng et al, 2007; Phillips et al, 2008).

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