Arabidopsis thaliana histidine phosphotransfer proteins (AHPs) are similar to bacterial and yeast histidine phosphotransfer proteins (HPts), which act in multistep phosphorelay signaling pathways. A phosphorelay pathway is the current model for cytokinin signaling. To assess the role of AHPs in cytokinin signaling, we isolated T-DNA insertions in the five AHP genes that are predicted to encode functional HPts and constructed multiple insertion mutants, including an ahp1,2,3,4,5 quintuple mutant. Single ahp mutants were indistinguishable from wild-type seedlings in cytokinin response assays. However, various higher-order mutants displayed reduced sensitivity to cytokinin in diverse cytokinin assays, indicating both a positive role for AHPs in cytokinin signaling and functional overlap among the AHPs. In contrast with the other four AHPs, AHP4 may play a negative role in some cytokinin responses. The quintuple ahp mutant showed various abnormalities in growth and development, including reduced fertility, increased seed size, reduced vascular development, and a shortened primary root. These data indicate that most of the AHPs are redundant, positive regulators of cytokinin signaling and affect multiple aspects of plant development.

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Signal transduction involving heterotrimeric G proteins is universal among fungi, animals, and plants. In plants and fungi, the best understood function for the G protein complex is its modulation of cell proliferation and one of several important signals that are known to modulate the rate at which these cells proliferate is D-glucose. Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings lacking the ␤ subunit (AGB1) of the G protein complex have altered cell division in the hypocotyl and are D-glucose hypersensitive. With the aim to discover new elements in G protein signaling, we screened for gain-of-function suppressors of altered cell proliferation during early development in the agb1-2 mutant background. One agb1-2-dependent suppressor, designated sgb1-1 D for suppressor of G protein beta1 (agb1-2), restored to wild type the altered cell division in the hypocotyl and sugar hypersensitivity of the agb1-2 mutant. Consistent with AGB1 localization, SGB1 is found at the highest steady-state level in tissues with active cell division, and this level increases in hypocotyls when grown on D-glucose and sucrose. SGB1 is shown here to be a Golgi-localized hexose transporter and acts genetically with AGB1 in early seedling development. INTRODUCTIONAn evolutionarily ancient mechanism for sensing extracellular signals involves the heterotrimeric G proteins, composed of ␣, ␤, and ␥ subunits. Heterotrimeric G protein complexes link ligand perception via seven-transmembrane (7TM), G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) to downstream effectors. Genes that encode G protein signaling elements have been identified in amoebae, fungi, plants, and animals, but among all multicellular eukaryotes, plants have the simplest repertoire of G protein elements to date. Specifically, the Arabidopsis genome encodes a single canonical G␣ and G␤ (AGB1) subunit and two G␥ subunits and a single regulator of G signaling (RGS1) protein (Jones and Assmann, 2004). There are as yet no plant GPCRs having confirmed ligands, although plants do have a limited set of predicted 7TM proteins (Moriyama and Jones, unpublished data). Similarly, there are few known downstream effectors that physically interact with either the plant G␣ subunit or the G␤␥ dimer. One example is a pirin protein (Lapik and Kaufman, 2003), known to serve as a transcriptional cofactor in humans, but with unknown function in Arabidopsis. Based on either genetic or biochemical tests, G␣ effectors in plants also include phospholipase D (Mishra et al., 2006) and ion channels (Aharon et al., 1998;Wang et al., 2001). Recently, we reported that a plant interactor and putative effector to G␣ is an outer membrane plastid protein designated THF1, and this protein together with G␣ comprises part of a dglucose signaling network (Huang et al., 2006).In animals and yeast, heterotrimeric G proteins couple a diverse set of signals such as photons, ions, small molecules, sugars, peptides, and protein ligands (Jones and Assmann, 2004) to control a broad range of physiology (Csaszar and Abel, 2001;Rosenkilde et al., 2001;Roc...

During meiosis in the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa, unpaired genes are identified and silenced by a process known as meiotic silencing by unpaired DNA (MSUD). Previous work has uncovered six proteins required for MSUD, all of which are also essential for meiotic progression. Additionally, they all localize in the perinuclear region, suggesting that it is a center of MSUD activity. Nevertheless, at least a subset of MSUD proteins must be present inside the nucleus, as unpaired DNA recognition undoubtedly takes place there. In this study, we identified and characterized two new proteins required for MSUD, namely SAD-4 and SAD-5. Both are previously uncharacterized proteins specific to Ascomycetes, with SAD-4 having a range that spans several fungal classes and SAD-5 seemingly restricted to a single order. Both genes appear to be predominantly expressed in the sexual phase, as molecular study combined with analysis of publicly available mRNA-seq datasets failed to detect significant expression of them in the vegetative tissue. SAD-4, like all known MSUD proteins, localizes in the perinuclear region of the meiotic cell. SAD-5, on the other hand, is found in the nucleus (as the first of its kind). Both proteins are unique compared to previously identified MSUD proteins in that neither is required for sexual sporulation. This homozygous-fertile phenotype uncouples MSUD from sexual development and allows us to demonstrate that both SAD-4 and SAD-5 are important for the production of masiRNAs, which are the small RNA molecules associated with meiotic silencing. E UKARYOTIC genomes are protected from viruses and transposons by a variety of defenses, many of which are based on RNA interference (RNAi). In a typical RNA silencing process, a double-stranded RNA is cleaved into small RNAs of 21-25 nt by an RNase III enzyme known as Dicer (Chang et al. 2012). An Argonaute-containing complex incorporates these small RNA species and uses them to guide transcriptional or post-transcriptional gene silencing.Neurospora crassa, a filamentous fungus, is protected by at least two RNA silencing processes. The first process, called quelling (Romano and Macino 1992), defends the N. crassa genome from repetitive elements such as transposons (Nolan et al. 2005). The quelling machinery may also play an important role in rDNA stability and DNA damage response (Cecere and Cogoni 2009;Lee et al. 2009). The second defense process, known as meiotic silencing by unpaired DNA (MSUD) (Shiu et al. 2001), works specifically in meiotic cells and silences genes that are not paired between homologous chromosomes (Kelly and Aramayo 2007;Chang et al. 2012). Because parental genomes are likely to have differentially located transposons, MSUD is well suited to protect an organism from their amplification during meiosis.In N. crassa, meiosis and sexual spore (ascospore) formation take place in specialized sac cells (asci). During homolog pairing, MSUD scans for the presence of unpaired DNA. If such unpaired DNA is detected, MSUD will silence...

In Neurospora crassa, genes lacking a pairing partner during meiosis are suppressed by a process known as meiotic silencing by unpaired DNA (MSUD). To identify novel MSUD components, we have developed a high-throughput reverse-genetic screen for use with the N. crassa knockout library. Here we describe the screening method and the characterization of a gene (sad-3) subsequently discovered. SAD-3 is a putative helicase required for MSUD and sexual spore production. It exists in a complex with other known MSUD proteins in the perinuclear region, a center for meiotic silencing activity. Orthologs of SAD-3 include Schizosaccharomyces pombe Hrr1, a helicase required for RNAi-induced heterochromatin formation. Both SAD-3 and Hrr1 interact with an RNA-directed RNA polymerase and an Argonaute, suggesting that certain aspects of silencing complex formation may be conserved between the two fungal species.