Asparagine-rich protein (NRP) mediates stress response by regulating biosynthesis of plant secondary metabolites in Arabidopsis

ABSTRACT

The plant-specific stress response protein NRP (asparagine-rich protein) is characterized by an asparagine-rich domain at its N-terminus and a conserved development and cell death (DCD) domain at its C-terminus. Previous transcriptional studies and phenotypic analyses have demonstrated the involvement of NRP in response to severe stress conditions, such as high salt and ER Endoplasmic reticulum-stress. We have recently identified distinct roles for NRP in biotic- and abiotic-stress signaling pathways, in which NRP interacts with different signaling proteins to change their subcellular localizations and stability. Here, to further explore the function of NRP, a transcriptome analysis was carried out on nrp1nrp2 knock-out lines at different life stages or under different growing conditions. The most significant changes in the transcriptome at both stages and conditions turned out to be the induction of the synthesis of secondary metabolites (SMs). Such an observation implicates that NRP is a general stress-responsive protein involved in various challenges faced by plants during their life cycle, which might involve a broad alteration in the distribution of SMs.

KEYWORDS:

• NRP
• transcriptome
• secondary metabolites
• stress response

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr Qingqiu Gong (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) for support in the analysis of RNA-seq data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31870730), Tianjin Natural Science Foundation (21JCZDJC00050), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Nankai University.