LEA (Late Embryogenesis Abundant) proteins and their encoding genes in Arabidopsis thaliana

By Michaela Hundertmark, D. Hincha. BMC Genomics, 2008

998 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BackgroundLEA (late embryogenesis abundant) proteins have first been described about 25 years ago as accumulating late in plant seed development. They were later found in vegetative plant tissues following environmental stress and also in desiccation tolerant bacteria and invertebrates. Although they are widely assumed to play crucial roles in cellular dehydration tolerance, their physiological and biochemical functions are largely unknown.ResultsWe present a genome-wide analysis of LEA proteins and their encoding genes in Arabidopsis thaliana. We identified 51 LEA protein encoding genes in the Arabidopsis genome that could be classified into nine distinct groups. Expression studies were performed on all genes at different developmental stages, in different plant organs and under different stress and hormone treatments using quantitative RT-PCR. We found evidence of expression for all 51 genes. There was only little overlap between genes expressed in vegetative tissues and in seeds and expression levels were generally higher in seeds. Most genes encoding LEA proteins had abscisic acid response (ABRE) and/or low temperature response (LTRE) elements in their promoters and many genes containing the respective promoter elements were induced by abscisic acid, cold or drought. We also found that 33% of all Arabidopsis LEA protein encoding genes are arranged in tandem repeats and that 43% are part of homeologous pairs. The majority of LEA proteins were predicted to be highly hydrophilic and natively unstructured, but some were predicted to be folded.ConclusionThe analyses indicate a wide range of sequence diversity, intracellular localizations, and expression patterns. The high fraction of retained duplicate genes and the inferred functional diversification indicate that they confer an evolutionary advantage for an organism under varying stressful environmental conditions. This comprehensive analysis will be an important starting point for future efforts to elucidate the functional role of these enigmatic proteins.

Subfields: Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/21143ca17f5d4e7b04a8c88f9c34437785e5336d

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Citations in the corpus

Three Arabidopsis SnRK2 protein kinases, SRK2D/SnRK2.2, SRK2E/SnRK2.6/OST1 and SRK2I/SnRK2.3, involved in ABA signaling are essential for the control of seed development and dormancy. (2009, methodology): “Hundertmark and Hincha (2008) recently reported that 34 of 51 LEA genes are expressed in seeds.”
The reduction of seed-specific dehydrins reduces seed longevity in Arabidopsis thaliana (2011, methodology): “in Arabidopsis Ten different genes encoding dehydrins were identified in the Arabidopsis genome (Hundertmark and Hincha, 2008).”
Multifaceted Role of Salicylic Acid in Combating Cold Stress in Plants: A Review (2020, background): “2012), 10 in Arabidopsis (Hundertmark and Hincha 2008), 9 in Malus (Liang et al.”
Comprehending crystalline β-carotene accumulation by comparing engineered cell models and the natural carotenoid-rich system of citrus (2011, neutral): “The PCR products were conﬁrmed by DNA sequencing (3130 Analyzer, Applied Biosystems, Tokyo, Japan).”
Response of Mediterranean Ornamental Plants to Drought Stress (2019, background): “In plants, the LEA proteins are considered important in plant drought tolerance [102].”
Response Mechanism of Plants to Drought Stress (2021, background): “In addition, most of the LEA genes have ABA response elements in their promoter regions, so the increase of endogenous ABA content in plants under drought conditions can also lead to the increase of LEA gene expression [82].”
Advances in physiological and molecular aspects of plant cold tolerance (2017, positive): “LEA proteins are suggested to be important for membrane stabilization and prevent protein aggregation (Hundertmark & Hincha 2008).”
LEA Proteins: Versatility of Form and Function (2010, methodology): “In the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, nine different groups have recently been proposed based on amino acid sequence analysis (Hundertmark and Hincha 2008; Bies-Ethève et al. 2008).”
The Enigmatic LEA Proteins and Other Hydrophilins1[W] (2008, background): “…before desiccation (Baker et al., 1988; Hughes and Galau, 1989; Ingram and Bartels, 1996; Oliveira et al., 2007; Bies-Ethève et al., 2008; Hundertmark and Hincha, 2008) and also in vegetative tissues exposed to dehydration, osmotic, and/or low-temperature stress (Dure et al., 1989;…”
Insights into Late Embryogenesis Abundant (LEA) Proteins in Plants: From Structure to the Functions (2014, background): “LEA proteins accumulate in vegetative tissues exposed to dehydration, osmotic, and/or low temperature stress [5] [17] [18] [24].”