Disordered Motifs and Domains in Cell Control - October 11-15, 2014

Disordered Motifs and Domains in Cell Control

Monday Speaker Abstracts

Plant Stress: Membrane Binding of the Disordered Plant Dehydrins Pia Harryson . Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.

Sudden temperature changes and vanishing supply of water present major challenges to plant survival, growth and productivity. This project investigates the biological and molecular function of the stressed induced dehydrin proteins to broaden our understanding on how plants adapt to drought, temperature changes or salty soils. Although highly expressed during stress is the molecular function of dehydrins yet unclear. Dehydrins are intrinsically disordered proteins expressed under water-related stress in plants. As a clue to their function, some dehydrins are found to interact in an orderly manner with negatively-charged lipids, supporting the idea of a key role in safeguarding membrane integrity. We have earlier reported that this lipid interaction is modulated electrostatically by global and local charge. Of particular interest is the pronounced effect of local charge that shed light on how dehydrin function is regulated in vivo: membrane binding and vesicle assembly is controlled by protonation of histidine switches flanking the conserved K-segments. However, the lipid binding capacity varies among the 4 dehydrins in this study, from some showing low/no binding examples of strong specific binding. These data indicate a functional diversity among the plant dehdyrins.

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