Macromolecular crowding sensing during osmotic stress in plants.

Osmotic stress conditions occur at multiple stages of plant life. Changes in water availability caused by osmotic stress induce alterations in the mechanical properties of the plasma membrane, its interaction with the cell wall, and the concentration of macromolecules in the cytoplasm. We summarize the reported players involved in the sensing mechanisms of osmotic stress in plants. We discuss how changes in macromolecular crowding are perceived intracellularly by intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) in proteins. Finally, we review methods for dynamically monitoring macromolecular crowding in living cells and discuss why their implementation is required for the discovery of new plant osmosensors. Elucidating the osmosensing mechanisms will be essential for designing strategies to improve plant productivity in the face of climate change.

Functional characterization of an acidic SK(3) dehydrin isolated from an Opuntia streptacantha cDNA library.

Cactus pears are succulent plants of the Cactaceae family adapted to extremely arid, hot and cold environments, making them excellent models for the study of molecular mechanisms underlying abiotic stress tolerance. Herein, we report a directional cDNA library from 12-month-old cladodes of Opuntia streptacantha plants subjected to abiotic stresses. A total of 442 clones were sequenced, representing 329 cactus pear unigenes, classified into eleven functional categories. The most abundant EST (unigen 33) was characterized under abiotic stress. This cDNA of 905 bp encodes a SK(3)-type acidic dehydrin of 248 amino acids. The OpsDHN1 gene contains an intron inserted within the sequence encoding the S-motif. qRT-PCR analysis shows that the OpsDHN1 transcript is specifically accumulated in response to cold stress, and induced by abscisic acid. Over-expression of the OpsDHN1 gene in Arabidopsis thaliana leads to enhanced tolerance to freezing treatment, suggesting that OpsDHN1 participates in freezing stress responsiveness. Generation of the first EST collection for the characterization of cactus pear genes constitutes a useful platform for the understanding of molecular mechanisms of stress tolerance in Opuntia and other CAM plants.