Using Co-Expression Analysis and Stress-Based Screens to Uncover Arabidopsis Peroxisomal Proteins Involved in Drought Response

PLoS One. 2015 Sep 14;10(9):e0137762. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0137762. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Peroxisomes are essential organelles that house a wide array of metabolic reactions important for plant growth and development. However, our knowledge regarding the role of peroxisomal proteins in various biological processes, including plant stress response, is still incomplete. Recent proteomic studies of plant peroxisomes significantly increased the number of known peroxisomal proteins and greatly facilitated the study of peroxisomes at the systems level. The objectives of this study were to determine whether genes that encode peroxisomal proteins with related functions are co-expressed in Arabidopsis and identify peroxisomal proteins involved in stress response using in silico analysis and mutant screens. Using microarray data from online databases, we performed hierarchical clustering analysis to generate a comprehensive view of transcript level changes for Arabidopsis peroxisomal genes during development and under abiotic and biotic stress conditions. Many genes involved in the same metabolic pathways exhibited co-expression, some genes known to be involved in stress response are regulated by the corresponding stress conditions, and function of some peroxisomal proteins could be predicted based on their co-expression pattern. Since drought caused expression changes to the highest number of genes that encode peroxisomal proteins, we subjected a subset of Arabidopsis peroxisomal mutants to a drought stress assay. Mutants of the LON2 protease and the photorespiratory enzyme hydroxypyruvate reductase 1 (HPR1) showed enhanced susceptibility to drought, suggesting the involvement of peroxisomal quality control and photorespiration in drought resistance. Our study provided a global view of how genes that encode peroxisomal proteins respond to developmental and environmental cues and began to reveal additional peroxisomal proteins involved in stress response, thus opening up new avenues to investigate the role of peroxisomes in plant adaptation to environmental stresses.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • ATP-Dependent Proteases / genetics*
  • ATP-Dependent Proteases / metabolism
  • Arabidopsis / genetics
  • Arabidopsis / growth & development*
  • Arabidopsis / metabolism
  • Arabidopsis Proteins / genetics*
  • Arabidopsis Proteins / metabolism
  • Computer Simulation
  • Droughts
  • Gene Expression Profiling / methods*
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Plant
  • Mutation*
  • Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis
  • Peroxisomes / metabolism*

Substances

  • Arabidopsis Proteins
  • EMU protein, Arabidopsis
  • ATP-Dependent Proteases
  • LON2 protein, Arabidopsis

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy (DE-FG02-91ER20021; http://energy.gov/) to JH. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.