tailieunhanh - Aquaporins as targets for stress tolerance in plants: Genomic complexity and perspectives

As a multigene family, plant aquaporins function not only in water transport but also in transport of small elements that are important for vegetative and reproductive growth of plants. Increasing evidence exhibits the relevance of aquaporins to tolerance against abiotic and biotic stresses such as drought, nutrient deficiency, and herbivore attack. | Turkish Journal of Botany Turk J Bot (2015) 39: 879-886 © TÜBİTAK doi: Review Article Aquaporins as targets for stress tolerance in plants: genomic complexity and perspectives 1, 2 Wonkeun John PARK *, Benjamin Todd CAMPBELL Pee Dee Research and Education Center, Clemson University, Florence, SC, USA 2 USDA-ARS, Coastal Plains Soil, Water, and Plant Research Center, Florence, SC, USA 1 Received: Accepted/Published Online: Printed: Abstract: As a multigene family, plant aquaporins function not only in water transport but also in transport of small elements that are important for vegetative and reproductive growth of plants. Increasing evidence exhibits the relevance of aquaporins to tolerance against abiotic and biotic stresses such as drought, nutrient deficiency, and herbivore attack. With the accumulation of crop genome sequencing, it is suggested that several aquaporin genes are conserved in subchromosomal locations as tandem duplicated members. In this review, we will discuss the compelling nature of aquaporins as multifunctional transport channels that are often encoded in clustered regions of genomes and relevant to stress resistance in plants. Key words: Aquaporin, boron, drought, silicon, stress, tandem duplication, water 1. Introduction Since the discovery of aquaporins as water channel proteins in human erythrocytes and renal cells, a dramatic diversity of aquaporin isoforms has been subsequently described across living organisms from prokaryotes to eukaryotes including unicellular algae, fungi, and higher plants (Preston et al., 1992; Maurel et al., 1993; Agre et al., 1998; Hohmann et al., 2000). Current knowledge of aquaporin multichannel proteins in plants indicates that they are generally classified in five distinct subfamilies by sequence homology and subcellular localization in association with versatile cellular transport functions (Kruse et al., .