Screening of protonstatin-1 (PS-1) analogs for improved inhibitors of plant plasma membrane H+-ATPase activity.

We previously identified protonstatin-1 (PS-1) as a selective inhibitor of plasma membrane H+-ATPase (PM H+-ATPase) activity and used it as a tool to validate the chemiosmotic model for polar auxin transport. Here, to obtain compounds with higher affinity than PS-1 for PM H+-ATPase, we synthesized 34 PS-1 analogs and examined their ability to inhibit PM H+-ATPase activity. The 34 analogs showed varying inhibitory effects on the activity of this enzyme. The strongest effect was observed for the small molecule PS-2, which was approximately five times stronger than PS-1. Compared to PS-1, PS-2 was also a stronger inhibitor of auxin uptake as well as acropetal and basipetal polar auxin transport in Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings. Because PS-2 is a more potent inhibitor of PM H+-ATPase than PS-1, we believe that this compound could be used as a tool to study the functions of this key plant enzyme.

Molecular Mechanisms of Plant Responses to Salt Stress.

Saline-alkali soils pose an increasingly serious global threat to plant growth and productivity. Much progress has been made in elucidating how plants adapt to salt stress by modulating ion homeostasis. Understanding the molecular mechanisms that affect salt tolerance and devising strategies to develop/breed salt-resilient crops have been the primary goals of plant salt stress signaling research over the past few decades. In this review, we reflect on recent major advances in our understanding of the cellular and physiological mechanisms underlying plant responses to salt stress, especially those involving temporally and spatially defined changes in signal perception, decoding, and transduction in specific organelles or cells.