Trends in Plant Science
Volume 5, Issue 6, 1 June 2000, Pages 252-258
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Review
Inositol signaling and plant growth

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1360-1385(00)01652-6Get rights and content

Abstract

Living organisms have evolved to contain a wide variety of receptors and signaling pathways that are essential for their survival in a changing environment. Of these, the phosphoinositide pathway is one of the best conserved. The ability of the phosphoinositides to permeate both hydrophobic and hydrophilic environments, and their diverse functions within cells have contributed to their persistence in nature. In eukaryotes, phosphoinositides are essential metabolites as well as labile messengers that regulate cellular physiology while traveling within and between cells. The stereospecificity of the six hydroxyls on the inositol ring provides the basis for the functional diversity of the phosphorylated isomers that, in turn, generate a selective means of intracellular and intercellular communication for coordinating cell growth. Although such complexity presents a difficult challenge for bench scientists, it is ideal for the regulation of cellular functions in living organisms.

Section snippets

Inositol phospholipids as regulators of growth

Most plant responses to external stimuli involve a change in growth and therefore membrane biogenesis. Membrane trafficking and signaling are inexorably linked in regulating cellular metabolism and controlling growth. To coordinate these processes, evolution appears to have capitalized on the stereospecificity of the PIs. During membrane trafficking, individual inositol phospholipids on the vesicle surface specify functional information like cogs on a wheel. As vesicles traffic from the

Ins(1,4,5)P3: a means of coordinating growth

The microdomains of PtdIns(4,5)P2 localized throughout the membranes establish a network of initiation sites for generating rapid, transient increases in Ins(1,4,5)P3 in response to stimuli. Although the sequence of events leading up to stimulus-mediated Ins(1,4,5)P3 production has not been delineated in plants, any stimulus that increases cytosolic Ca2+ in a PtdIns(4,5)P2 microdomain should, in theory, activate plant PLCs to produce a transient increase in Ins(1,4,5)P3 (Ref. 2). It is not

What does the future hold?

As we begin to combine biochemical and molecular genetic approaches to understand physiological responses on a macro scale it will be important to characterize the changes in inositol signaling as plants mature and respond to changes in nutrient flux and environmental conditions36. Crucial to interpreting these data will be an understanding of the subcellular localization of the proteins and lipids. To this end, the recent development of useful tools such as the fluorescently labeled inositol

Acknowledgements

We apologize to the authors who could not be cited because of limited reference space. We would like to acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (MCB-9604285), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NAGW-4984) and the North Carolina Agriculture Research Service to W.F.B., and a DAAD fellowship HSPIII financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Technology to I.H. We also acknowledge Bjørn Drøbak, Steve C. Huber, Gloria K. Muday and

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