Exploiting protein modification systems to boost crop productivity: SUMO proteases in focus

Abstract

Genes encoding deSUMOylating proteases in crop plants are more elaborate than in their non-cultivated relatives, pointing towards a role for deSUMOylation in crop productivity.

Dealing With Stress: A Review of Plant SUMO Proteases

“…SUMO may provide a key point of cross talk between the different PTMs as SUMOylation can act as a signal for ubiquitination of proteins (Elrouby et al, 2013) and can also regulate kinases and phosphatases (Crozet et al, 2014). This enables SUMO to act as a central regulator of signaling and enables the PTMs to coordinate complex molecular responses (Garrido et al, 2018). This may enable the SUMO system to exert control over hormonal responses in plants.…”

“…SUMO has been proven to have a critical role in stress responses (Kurepa et al, 2003; Miura et al, 2007; Saracco et al, 2007; Golebiowski et al, 2009), and it has been hypothesized that the SUMO proteases provide the SUMO system with specificity (Yates et al, 2016). This has led to the hypothesis that the crop species may have a greater number of SUMO proteases due to the selection pressures that have been applied to domesticated plants and bred in for stress tolerance (Augustine et al, 2016; Garrido et al, 2018). Generally, this has been observed in maize, with nine proteases identified based on sequence similarity to Arabidopsis ESD4 and OTS1 and 2 (Augustine et al, 2016).…”

“…Generally, this has been observed in maize, with nine proteases identified based on sequence similarity to Arabidopsis ESD4 and OTS1 and 2 (Augustine et al, 2016). The crop Brassica species (maize, rice and sorghum) were all found to have many more sequences that matched ULP protease domain than four other members of non-domesticated Brassicas that were examined, suggesting that crop domestication may result in diversification of the SUMO proteases (Garrido et al, 2018).…”

Defining the function of SUMO system in pod development and abiotic stresses in Peanut

“…However, MMS21 genes were expressed poorly in nearly all tissues, indicating that the role of MMS21 in peanut is mainly possibly focused on DNA repair. SUMO proteases, which have deSUMOylation activity, also play important regulatory roles in plant development and stress responses [51,56]. For example, ESD4 was found to participate in the regulation of flowering of Arabidopsis [57].…”

“…It is increasingly important to study plant adaptation mechanisms to drought and high salinity in soils [20]. In Arabidopsis, it is well established that the abundance of SUMO conjugates increases in response to exposure drought and high salinity [1,51], but little is known in peanut. So, we first investigated SUMO conjugates of peanut seedlings under drought stress.…”