ARS | Publication request: Decoding of calcium signal through calmodulin: calmodulin-binding proteins in plants

Submitted to: Springer Verlag
Publication Type: Book / Chapter
Publication Acceptance Date: August 2, 2011
Publication Date: September 5, 2011
Citation: Du, L., Yang, T., Puthanveettil, S.Y., Poovaiah, B.W. 2011. Decoding of calcium signal through calmodulin: calmodulin-binding proteins in plants. In: Signaling and Communication in Plants, vol. 10, Coding and Decoding of Calcium Signals in Plants, Luan, S. (ed.). Springer Verlag. p. 177-233.

Technical Abstract: Many abiotic and biotic stimuli such as heat, cold, drought, salt, light, wind, touch, wounding, symbionts and pathogens as well as growth, developmental and hormonal cues can quickly induce cytosolic calcium increases. Calmodulin, the most thoroughly studied calcium sensor, mediates interpretation of calcium signals in various aspects of plant life including growth and development, reproduction and responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Calmodulin was found to interact with a wide spectrum of target proteins which carry various enzymatic/biochemical/physiological functional roles such as kinases, catalytic enzymes, transcription factors, cytoskeleton proteins and various pump/channel proteins. This book chapter summarizes the calmodulin-mediated regulations of target proteins in plants such as SAURs, PCBP, AtBTs, WRKYs, GAD, CCaMK, MLO, AtCAT3, DWF1, AtSRs/CaMTAs and CRLK1. How a simple messenger, the divalent calcium cation, is encoded into such a spectrum of specific signals and how these encoded calcium signals are interpreted into various biochemical/molecular responses which underlie various physiological activities with the specificity and accuracy to support precisely coordinated plant life, is the most amazing yet mysterious nature of calcium/calmodulin-mediated signaling. Concerted multi-disciplinary approaches should help in our future dissection of the calcium/calmodulin-mediated signaling network in plants.