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MEK/ERK inhibitor U0126 enhanced salt stress-induced programmed cell death in Thellungiella halophila suspension-cultured cells

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Abstract

Programmed cell death (PCD) is an active cellular suicide that occurs both in animals and plants throughout development and in response to abiotic or biotic stress. In contrast to plant hypersensitive response-like cell death, little is known about the molecular machinery that regulates the halophyte plant PCD under high salinity stress. Since mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are involved in plant response/tolerance to salt stress, and plant MAPK genes belong to the extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) subfamily, we have investigated the role of ERK-like enzymes in high salinity stress-induced cell death in Thellungiella halophila. The data showed that ERK-like enzymes were early (10 min) and transiently activated under 300 mM NaCl stress. Pretreatment with 10 μM U0126, a special MEK/ERK inhibitor, resulted in a small but statistically significant increase of the percentage of terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labelling (TUNEL)-positive nuclei in contrast to salt alone. The effects of U0126 on H2O2 production and cytochrome c (cyt c) release were also investigated. We found that the pretreatment with U0126 accelerated H2O2 production as well as cyt c release, and eventually enhanced cell death. The results suggest that ERK-like enzymes in Thellungiella halophila may act as a positive regulator of salt tolerance, as illustrated by pretreatment with U0126 which enhanced cell death under high salinity stress.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 40825001 and 30870425). The authors are grateful to Rui Li from the School of Basic Medical Sciences of Lanzhou University for his help with the TUNEL assay.

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  1. Extreme Stress Resistance and Biotechnology Laboratory, Shapotou Desert Research and Experiment Station, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 730000, Lanzhou, China

    Jin Wang, Xinrong Li, Yubing Liu, Xin Zhao, Cuiyun Chen & Fang Tian

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  1. Jin Wang
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Correspondence to Jin Wang.

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Wang, J., Li, X., Liu, Y. et al. MEK/ERK inhibitor U0126 enhanced salt stress-induced programmed cell death in Thellungiella halophila suspension-cultured cells. Plant Growth Regul 63, 207–216 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-010-9517-2

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