754
Views
1
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Research Paper

Identification of mitogen-activated protein kinases substrates in Arabidopsis using kinase client assay

, , , , , , & ORCID Icon show all
Article: 2326238 | Received 24 Nov 2023, Accepted 25 Feb 2024, Published online: 17 Mar 2024
 

ABSTRACT

Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MPK) cascades are essential signal transduction components that control a variety of cellular responses in all eukaryotes. MPKs convert extracellular stimuli into cellular responses by the phosphorylation of downstream substrates. Although MPK cascades are predicted to be very complex, only limited numbers of MPK substrates have been identified in plants. Here, we used the kinase client (KiC) assay to identify novel substrates of MPK3 and MPK6. Recombinant MPK3 or MPK6 were tested against a large synthetic peptide library representing in vivo phosphorylation sites, and phosphorylated peptides were identified by high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry. From this screen, we identified 23 and 21 putative client peptides of MPK3 and MPK6, respectively. To verify the phosphorylation of putative client peptides, we performed in vitro kinase assay with recombinant fusion proteins of isolated client peptides. We found that 13 and 9 recombinant proteins were phosphorylated by MPK3 and MPK6. Among them, 11 proteins were proven to be the novel substrates of two MPKs. This study suggests that the KiC assay is a useful method to identify new substrates of MPKs.

Disclosure statement

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

Author contributions

S.B., N. A. and W.S.C. designed, planned, and organized the experiment. S.B., N.A., J.A., S.H.K. and Z.R. performed experiments and data analysis. S.B., N.A., J.C.H., J.J.T. and W.S.C. wrote the manuscript with feedback from all authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15592324.2024.2326238

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education [2020R1A6A1A03044344, 2023R1A2C1005572 and RS-2023-00235511].