FERONIA and Her Pals: Functions and Mechanisms

Abstract

Current research into the FERONIA family of receptor kinases highlights both questions and opportunities for understanding signaling strategies in plant growth and survival.

Figure 1.

FERONIA protein domain structure and phylogenetic tree of the Arabidopsis THESEUS1/FERONIA receptor kinase family. A, Deduced FERONIA structural domains. SS, ECD, TM are, respectively, signal peptide, extracellular domain, transmembrane domain. MALA and MALB are tandem malectin-like domains. exJM, extracellular juxtamembrane region. Numbers indicate amino acid residues. B, The THESEUS1/FERONIA protein family.

Figure 2.

A model for FERONIA signaling and related pathways. FERONIA-related information is largely assembled from Duan et al. (2010, 2014), Haruta et al. (2014), and Li et al. (2015) and other functional studies (Rotman et al., 2003, Huck et al., 2003). The ANXUR (ANX) pathway is derived from Boisson-Dernier et al. (2009, 2013, 2015). The THESEUS1 (THE1) depiction is derived from Hèmaty et al. (2007). The RAC/ROP to auxin-regulated gene de-repression pathway is from Tao et al. (2002, 2005), which also demonstrated auxin activation of RAC/ROPs. Pathways for GPI anchor assembly, GPI-AP modification, and their trafficking to membrane microdomains are largely based on findings in yeast and animals, mostly conserved in plants (Cheung et al., 2014 and references therein).