Abstract
A hydrophobic cuticle consisting of waxes and the polyester cutin covers the aerial epidermis of all land plants, providing essential protection from desiccation and other stresses. We have determined the enzymatic basis of cutin polymerization through characterization of a tomato extracellular acyltransferase, CD1, and its substrate, 2-mono(10,16-dihydroxyhexadecanoyl)glycerol. CD1 has in vitro polyester synthesis activity and is required for cutin accumulation in vivo, indicating that it is a cutin synthase.
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Acknowledgements
We thank G. Lomonossoff (John Innes Centre) and Plant Bioscience Limited for the pEAQ vector, M. Toso for help with transmission electron microscopy, S. Zhang and B. Sherwood for assistance with MALDI-TOF MS and M. Pollard and K. Niklas for critical discussion. This work was supported by grants from the US National Science Foundation (Plant Genome Program; DBI-0606595), the United States–Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund (IS-4234-09); the US Department of Agriculture Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (2011-04197); and the Danish Council for Strategic Research (10-093465). T.H.Y. was supported in part by a US National Institutes of Health Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Grant (T32 GM008500).
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T.H.Y. purified recombinant protein and performed chemical analysis of soluble surface lipids and acyltransferase assays. L.B.B.M. performed gene and protein expression experiments and cutin analysis. H.M.-F.V. and M.H.C. synthesized 2-MHG. T.I. identified and performed initial characterization and rough mapping of the mutant. Y.H. and L.Z. performed fine genetic mapping experiments and constructed the transgenic complementation vector. A.J.M. performed the tissue-specific gene expression experiments. G.J.B. conducted light microscopy experiments. L.B.B.M. and D.S.D. performed immunolocalization experiments. T.H.Y., L.B.B.M. and J.K.C.R. designed the study, analyzed the data and wrote the paper.
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Yeats, T., Martin, L., Viart, HF. et al. The identification of cutin synthase: formation of the plant polyester cutin. Nat Chem Biol 8, 609–611 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.960
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.960
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