A plant vacuolar protease, VPE, mediates virus-induced hypersensitive cell death.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 15297671.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
Programmed cell death (PCD) in animals depends on caspase protease activity. Plants also exhibit PCD, for example as a response to pathogens, although a plant caspase remains elusive. Here we show that vacuolar processing enzyme (VPE) is a protease essential for a virus-induced hypersensitive response that involves PCD. VPE deficiency prevented virus-induced hypersensitive cell death in tobacco plants. VPE is structurally unrelated to caspases, although VPE has a caspase-1 activity. Thus, plants have evolved a regulated cellular suicide strategy that, unlike PCD of animals, is mediated by VPE and the cellular vacuole.
Medical subject headings
- Apoptosis
- Cysteine Endopeptidases
- Endopeptidases
- Nicotiana
- Tobacco Mosaic Virus