Glutamate Receptor-Like Ion Channels in Arabidopsis thaliana
Ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs) are glutamate-gated nonselective cation channels (NSCC) that mediate rapid conduction of impulses through the synapses in central nervous system of animals. At one time, signaling through the iGluRs was thought to b
- PDF / 311,539 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 56 Downloads / 207 Views
Glutamate Receptor-Like Ion Channels in Arabidopsis thaliana Hemant, Mohamed M. Ibrahim, Maryam Sarwat, and Altaf Ahmad
Abstract Ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs) are glutamate-gated nonselective cation channels (NSCC) that mediate rapid conduction of impulses through the synapses in central nervous system of animals. At one time, signaling through the iGluRs was thought to be limited to the animal system but with the discovery of 20 glutamate receptor-like genes (GLRs) in Arabidopsis thaliana has paved the way for the study of glutamate receptors in an organism lacking nervous system. These 20 genes expressed in diverse tissue throughout the plant and designated as putative glutamate receptor. They were named as putative glutamate receptor on the basis of high similarity of their deduced amino acid sequences with members of the iGluR superfamily. Furthermore, these nonselective ion channels share the properties similar to those of animal iGluRs. The information based on sequence similarity predicts that A. thaliana glutamate receptors (AtGLRs) also exist as the integral membrane proteins like iGluRs. Through the application of specific antagonists or agonists, designated as inhibitors or stimulators respectively, the putative function of AtGLRs has been associated to an array of processes. Comprehensive information about glutamate receptors of A. thaliana is given in this chapter.
Hemant Faculty of Science, Department of Botany, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India M.M. Ibrahim Faculty of Science, Department of Botany and Microbiology, Alexandria University, P.O. Box 21511, Alexandria, Egypt M. Sarwat Amity Institute of Pharmacy, Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India A. Ahmad (*) Department of Botany, Faculty of Life Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 M. Sarwat et al. (eds.), Stress Signaling in Plants: Genomics and Proteomics Perspective, Volume 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42183-4_3
69
70
Hemant et al.
Introduction Like animals, glutamate receptor-like genes (GLRs) have also been identified in a number of plant species including Arabidopsis thaliana. Twenty genes in A. thaliana genome have been uncovered after completion of whole genome sequencing project that encode subunits of glutamate-like receptors (AtGLRs) (Lam et al. 1998; Lacombe et al. 2001). These AtGlr subunits are so named due to their similarity in primary sequence and predicted secondary structure to animal ionotropic glutamate receptor (iGluR) subunits (Lam et al. 1998). On the basis of parsimony analysis, these 20 glutamate-like genes have been divided into 3 protein families, Clade I, Clade II, and Clade III, that contain all the signature domains of animal ionotropic GluRs (Chiu et al. 2002; Davenport 2002). In animals, iGluRs predominantly function as a glutamate-gated Na+ and Ca2+ ion channels of influx pathways at neural junction (Dingledine et al. 1999). These iGluRs are nonselective cation channels (NSCC), selectiv
Data Loading...
