Characterizing a new activity of glutathione in the regulation of redox metabolic pathways

Abstract

As sessile organisms, plants employ an intricate signaling network to interconnect and orchestrate multiple layers of defense mechanism to overcome environmental stresses. In this sense, cyclophilins (CYPs) belong to a peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase family are known to be key players in regulating growth and defense on plants. CYPs are found across all subcellular compartments and are involved in various physiological processes including transcriptional regulation, organogenesis, photosynthetic and hormone signaling pathways, stress adaptation and defense responses. These important and diverse activities of CYPs must be reflected by their versatility as cellular and molecular modulators. In the chloroplast, for instance, CYP20-3 is a regulatory hub that activates defense by interaction with SAT1, but also growth by interaction 2-Cys peroxiredoxins (2CPs) proteins. Therefore, the overall goal of this study was to investigate the interaction of plants CYP20-3 with peroxiredoxins proteins. As a result, it was found that under heat shock conditions CYP20-3 inhibit 2CPs. In addition to that, we found that 2CPs conformation is regulated by a post-translation modification, named S-glutathionylation, that great changes 2CPs metabolic pathway.