H2S Persulfidated and Increased Kinase Activity of MPK4 to Response Cold Stress in Arabidopsis

Xinzhe Du; Zhuping Jin; Zhiqiang Liu; Danmei Liu; Liping Zhang; Xiaoli Ma; Guangdong Yang; Sha Liu; Yarong Guo; Yanxi Pei

doi:10.3389/fmolb.2021.635470

H₂S Persulfidated and Increased Kinase Activity of MPK4 to Response Cold Stress in Arabidopsis

Front Mol Biosci. 2021 Mar 11:8:635470. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2021.635470. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Xinzhe Du^{1

2}, Zhuping Jin², Zhiqiang Liu², Danmei Liu², Liping Zhang², Xiaoli Ma², Guangdong Yang³, Sha Liu¹, Yarong Guo², Yanxi Pei²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry, Firtst Hospital/First Clinical Medical College of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China.
² School of Life Science, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, China.
³ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON, Canada.

Abstract

Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) is a gasotransmitter along with nitric oxide and carbon oxide, which is involved in plant growth and development as well as biotic and abiotic stress resistance. In a previous study, we reported that mitogen-activated protein kinases, especially MPK4, are important downstream components of H₂S involved in alleviating cold stress; however the underlying mechanism is unclear. In this study, we determined that the ability of H₂S to alleviate cold stress is impaired in mpk4 mutants, but not in the upstream mek2 and crlk1 mutants. MPK4 was basically persulfidated, and NaHS (H₂S donor) further increased the persulfidation level of MPK4. MEK2 was not persulfidated by H₂S. NaHS treatments increased the MPK4 activity level nearly tenfold. The persulfidation signal of MPK4 did not disappear after eight cystein residues in MPK4 were site-mutated, respectively. Above all, our results suggested that H₂S alleviates cold stress directly by persulfidating MPK4 and increasing the MPK4 kinase activity.

Keywords: MEK2; MPK4; Persulfidation; cold stress; hydrogen sulfide.