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The plant sHSP superfamily: five new members in Arabidopsis thaliana with unexpected properties

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Cell Stress and Chaperones Aims and scope

Abstract

The small heat shock proteins (sHsps), which are ubiquitous stress proteins proposed to act as chaperones, are encoded by an unusually complex gene family in plants. Plant sHsps are classified into different subfamilies according to amino acid sequence similarity and localization to distinct subcellular compartments. In the whole Arabidopsis thaliana genome, 19 genes were annotated to encode sHsps, of which 14 belong to previously defined plant sHsp families. In this paper, we report studies of the five additional sHsp genes in A. thaliana, which can now be shown to represent evolutionarily distinct sHsp subfamilies also found in other plant species. While two of these five sHsps show expression patterns typical of the other 14 genes, three have unusual tissue specific and developmental profiles and do not respond to heat induction. Analysis of intracellular targeting indicates that one sHsp represents a new class of mitochondrion-targeted sHsps, while the others are cytosolic/nuclear, some of which may cooperate with other sHsps in formation of heat stress granules. Three of the five new proteins were purified and tested for chaperone activity in vitro. Altogether, these studies complete our basic understanding of the sHsp chaperone family in plants.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Eman Basha (Tucson) for gifts of purified recombinant Hsp17.6C-CI and Lutz Nover (Frankfurt) for many helpful discussions. This work was supported by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to K.D.S. (Scha577/6) and P.v.K.D. (AFGN grant KO2888/1-2), from the US National Institute of Health (GM42762), US Department of Agriculture (NRICGP 3510014857), and US National Science Foundation (IBN-0213128) to E.V.

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  1. Masood Siddique & Sascha Gernhard

    Present address: Department of Biochemistry II, University Hospital, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60596, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

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  1. Molecular Cell Biology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Biocenter N200, 3.OG, Max-von-Laue-Str. 9, 60438, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Masood Siddique, Sascha Gernhard, Pascal von Koskull-Döring & Klaus-Dieter Scharf

  2. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, University of Arizona, 1007 E Lowell Street, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Elizabeth Vierling

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Correspondence to Klaus-Dieter Scharf.

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Fig. S1

A Cytoplasmic/nuclear subfamily CIV. B Cytoplasmic/nuclear subfamily CV. C Cytoplasmic/nuclear subfamily CVI. D Mitochondrial subfamily MII. E Peroxisomal subfamily (Po) (PDF 237 KB)

Fig. S2

A Hsp17.6C-CI. B Hsp18.5-CIV. C Hsp21.7-CVI. D Hsp26.5-MIIΔTP. E Hsp15.7-Po (PDF 476 KB)

Fig. S3

A Nucleo-cytoplasmic sHsps. B Organellar sHsps (PDF 508 KB)

Table S1

Overview of sHsp expression constructs and used primers (DOC 49 KB)

Table S2

Overview of microarray elements for expression analysis of sHsps (DOC 42 KB)

Table S3

sHsps homologous to the newly identified A.thaliana members (DOC 147 KB)

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Siddique, M., Gernhard, S., von Koskull-Döring, P. et al. The plant sHSP superfamily: five new members in Arabidopsis thaliana with unexpected properties. Cell Stress and Chaperones 13, 183–197 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12192-008-0032-6

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