The primary signaling outputs of brassinosteroids are regulated by abscisic acid signaling

Abstract

Phytohormones have essential roles in coordinately regulating a large array of developmental processes. Studies have revealed that brassinosteroids (BRs) and abscisic acid (ABA) interact to regulate hundreds of expression in genes, governing many biological processes. However, whether their interaction is through modification or intersection of their primary signaling cascades, or by independent or parallel pathways remains a big mystery. Using biochemical and molecular markers of BR signaling and ABA biosynthetic mutants, we demonstrated that exogenous ABA rapidly inhibits BR signaling outputs as indicated by the phosphorylation status of BES1 and BR-responsive gene expression. Experiments using a bri1 null-allele, bri1-116, and analysis of subcellular localization of BKI1-YFP further revealed that the BR receptor complex is not required for ABA to act on BR signaling outputs. However, when the BR downstream signaling component BIN2 is inhibited by LiCl, ABA failed to inhibit BR signaling outputs. Also, using a set of ABA insensitive mutants, we found that regulation of ABA on the BR primary signaling pathway depends on the ABA early signaling components, ABI1 and ABI2. We propose that the signaling cascades of ABA and BR primarily cross-talk after BR perception, but before their transcriptional activation. This model provides a reasonable explanation for why a large proportion of BR-responsive genes are also regulated by ABA, and provides an insight into the molecular mechanisms by which BRs could interact with ABA.