Clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) regulates many aspects of plant development, including hormone signaling and responses to environmental stresses. Despite the importance of this process, the machinery that regulates CME in plants is largely unknown. In mammals, the heterotetrameric ADAPTOR PROTEIN COMPLEX-2 (AP-2) is required for the formation of clathrin-coated vesicles at the plasma membrane (PM). Although the existence of AP-2 has been predicted in Arabidopsis thaliana, the biochemistry and functionality of the complex is still uncharacterized. Here, we identified all the subunits of the Arabidopsis AP-2 by tandem affinity purification and found that one of the large AP-2 subunits, AP2A1, localized at the PM and interacted with clathrin. Furthermore, endocytosis of the leucine-rich repeat receptor kinase, BRASSINOSTEROID INSENSITIVE1 (BRI1), was shown to depend on AP-2. Knockdown of the two Arabidopsis AP2A genes or overexpression of a dominant-negative version of the medium AP-2 subunit, AP2M, impaired BRI1 endocytosis and enhanced the brassinosteroid signaling. Our data reveal that the CME machinery in Arabidopsis is evolutionarily conserved and that AP-2 functions in receptormediated endocytosis.

Adaptor protein (AP) complexes are the predominant coat proteins of membrane vesicles in post-Golgi trafficking of mammalian cells. Each AP complex contains a specific medium subunit, μ-adaptin, that selects cargo proteins bearing sequence-specific sorting motifs. Much less is known about the AP complexes and their μ subunits in plants. In contrast, the μ subunit of neither the post-Golgi trafficking AP-1 complex nor the endocytic AP-2 complex has been identified. Here, we report the functional analysis of redundant AP-1 μ-adaptins AP1M1 (also known as muB1) and AP1M2 (also known as muB2). Coimmunoprecipitation revealed that both AP1M2 and its less strongly expressed isoform AP1M1 are complexed with the large subunit γ-adaptin of AP-1. In addition, AP1M2 was localized at or near the trans-Golgi network. Knockout mutations of AP1M2 impaired pollen function and arrested plant growth whereas the ap1m1 ap1m2 double mutant was nearly pollen-lethal. At the cellular level, the absence of AP1M2 entailed inhibition of multiple trafficking pathways from the trans-Golgi network to the vacuole and to the plasma membrane in interphase and to the plane of cell division in cytokinesis. Thus, AP-1 is crucial in post-Golgi trafficking in plant cells and required for cell division and plant growth.adaptor complex 1 | membrane traffic | secretory pathway | development

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Cytokinesis is the process of partitioning the cytoplasm of a dividing cell, thereby completing mitosis. Cytokinesis in the plant cell is achieved by the formation of a new cell wall between daughter nuclei using components carried in Golgi-derived vesicles that accumulate at the midplane of the phragmoplast and fuse to form the cell plate. Proteins that play major roles in the development of the cell plate in plant cells are not well defined. Here, we report that an AP180 amino-terminal homology/epsin amino-terminal homology domain-containing protein from Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) is involved in clathrin-coated vesicle formation from the cell plate. Arabidopsis Epsin-like Clathrin Adaptor1 (AtECA1; At2g01600) and its homologous proteins AtECA2 and AtECA4 localize to the growing cell plate in cells undergoing cytokinesis and also to the plasma membrane and endosomes in nondividing cells. AtECA1 (At2g01600) does not localize to nascent cell plates but localizes at higher levels to expanding cell plates even after the cell plate fuses with the parental plasma membrane. The temporal and spatial localization patterns of AtECA1 overlap most closely with those of the clathrin light chain. In vitro protein interaction assays revealed that AtECA1 binds to the clathrin H chain via its carboxyl-terminal domain. These results suggest that these AP180 amino-terminal homology/epsin amino-terminal homology domain-containing proteins, AtECA1, AtECA2, and AtECA4, may function as adaptors of clathrin-coated vesicles budding from the cell plate.

The retromer is involved in recycling lysosomal sorting receptors in mammals. A component of the retromer complex in Arabidopsis thaliana, vacuolar protein sorting 29 (VPS29), plays a crucial role in trafficking storage proteins to protein storage vacuoles. However, it is not known whether or how vacuolar sorting receptors (VSRs) are recycled from the prevacuolar compartment (PVC) to the trans-Golgi network (TGN) during trafficking to the lytic vacuole (LV). Here, we report that VPS29 plays an essential role in the trafficking of soluble proteins to the LV from the TGN to the PVC. maigo1-1 (mag1-1) mutants, which harbor a knockdown mutation in VPS29, were defective in trafficking of two soluble proteins, Arabidopsis aleurain-like protein (AALP):green fluorescent protein (GFP) and sporamin:GFP, to the LV but not in trafficking membrane proteins to the LV or plasma membrane or via the secretory pathway. AALP:GFP and sporamin:GFP in mag1-1 protoplasts accumulated in the TGN but were also secreted into the medium. In mag1-1 mutants, VSR1 failed to recycle from the PVC to the TGN; rather, a significant proportion was transported to the LV; VSR1 overexpression rescued this defect. Moreover, endogenous VSRs were expressed at higher levels in mag1-1 plants. Based on these results, we propose that VPS29 plays a crucial role in recycling VSRs from the PVC to the TGN during the trafficking of soluble proteins to the LV.

In eukaryotic cells, protein trafficking plays an essential role in biogenesis of proteins that belong to the endomembrane compartments. In this process, an important step is the sorting of organellar proteins depending on their final destinations. For vacuolar proteins, vacuolar sorting receptors (VSRs) and receptor homology-transmembrane-RING H2 domain proteins (RMRs) are thought to be responsible. Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) contains seven VSRs. Among them, VSR1, VSR3, and VSR4 are involved in sorting storage proteins targeted to the protein storage vacuole (PSV) in seeds. However, the identity of VSRs for soluble proteins of the lytic vacuole in vegetative cells remains controversial. Here, we provide evidence that VSR1, VSR3, and VSR4 are involved in sorting soluble lytic vacuolar and PSV proteins in vegetative cells. In protoplasts from leaf tissues of vsr1vsr3 and vsr1vsr4 but not vsr5vsr6, and rmr1rmr2 and rmr3rmr4 double mutants, soluble lytic vacuolar (Arabidopsis aleurainlike protein:green fluorescent protein [GFP] and carboxypeptidase Y:GFP and PSV (phaseolin) proteins, but not the vacuolar membrane protein Arabidopsis bFructosidase4:GFP, exhibited defects in their trafficking; they accumulated to the endoplasmic reticulum with an increased secretion into medium. The trafficking defects in vsr1vsr4 protoplasts were rescued by VSR1 or VSR4 but not VSR5 or AtRMR1. Furthermore, of the luminal domain swapping mutants between VSR1 and VSR5, the mutant with the luminal domain of VSR1, but not that of VSR5, rescued the trafficking defects of Arabidopsis aleurain-like protein:GFP and phaseolin in vsr1vsr4 protoplasts. Based on these results, we propose that VSR1, VSR3, and VSR4, but not other VSRs, are involved in sorting soluble lytic vacuolar and PSV proteins for their trafficking to the vacuoles in vegetative cells.

Endocytosis and subsequent trafficking pathways are crucial for regulating the activity of plasma membrane-localized proteins. Depending on cellular and physiological conditions, the internalized cargoes are sorted at (and transported from) the trans-Golgi network/early endosome (TGN/EE) to the vacuole for degradation or recycled back to the plasma membrane. How this occurs at the molecular level remains largely elusive. Here, we provide evidence that the ENTH domain-containing protein AtECA4 plays a crucial role in recycling cargoes from the TGN/EE to the plasma membrane in Arabidopsis thaliana. AtECA4:sGFP primarily localized to the TGN/EE and plasma membrane (at low levels). Upon NaCl or mannitol treatment, AtECA4:sGFP accumulated at the TGN/EE at an early time point but was released from the TGN/EE to the cytosol at later time points. The ateca4 mutant showed higher resistance to osmotic stress and more sensitive to exogenous abscisic acid (ABA) than the wild type, as well as increased expression of ABA-inducible genes RD29A and RD29B. Consistently, ABCG25, a plasma membrane-localized ABA exporter, accumulated at the prevacuolar compartment in ateca4, indicating a defect in recycling to the plasma membrane. However, the role of AtECA4 in cargo recycling is not specific to ABCG25, as it also functions in the recycling of BRI1. These results suggest that AtECA4 plays a crucial role in the recycling of endocytosed cargoes from the TGN/EE to the plasma membrane.

SUMMARY In organellogenesis of the chloroplast from endosymbiotic cyanobacterium, the establishment of protein targeting mechanisms to the chloroplast should have been pivotal. However, it is still mysterious how these mechanisms were established and how they work in plant cells. Here, we show that AKR2A, the cytosolic targeting factor for chloroplast outer membrane (COM) proteins, evolved from the ankyrin repeat domain (ARD) of the host cell by stepwise extensions of its N-terminal domain, and two lipids monogalactosyldiacylglycerol (MGDG) and phosphatidylglycerol (PG) of the endosymbiont were selected to function as the AKR2A receptor. Structural analysis, molecular modeling and mutational analysis of the ARD identified two adjacent sites for coincidental and synergistic binding of MGDG and PG. Based on these findings, we propose that the targeting mechanism of COM proteins was established using components from both the endosymbiont and host cell through a modification of the protein-protein interacting ARD into a lipid binding domain.