Document Type
Article
Subject Area(s)
Nitrogen (metabolism, deficiency); Arabidopsis Proteins (metabolism, genetics); Arabidopsis (genetics, metabolism, growth & development); Transcription Factors (metabolism, genetics); Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; Proteolysis; Autophagy; F-Box Proteins (metabolism, genetics); Stress, Physiological; Mutation
Abstract
Plants have evolved intricate strategies to cope with various abiotic stresses. Ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation plays a key role in plant development as well as abiotic stress tolerance. In this study, we identify LAO1, an F-box protein with unknown function, as a negative regulator of plant fitness during nitrogen starvation. DOMINANT SUPPRESSOR OF KAR 2 (DSK2) interacts with and mediates the autophagic degradation of LAO1 protein during nitrogen starvation. The loss of LAO1 improves the fitness of an autophagy-deficient mutant, atg5-1, under nitrogen starvation. Intriguingly, mutations in DSK2 facilitate rather than reduce plant growth after nitrogen starvation. This unexpected effect of DSK2 knockout led us to discover that DSK2 also interacts with and degrades a group of class I TCP transcription factors. Phenotypic observations demonstrate that class I TCPs are crucial for plant adaptation to nitrogen starvation. Moreover, genetic analyses indicate that class I TCPs function downstream of LAO1 and counteract its negative effects. Collectively, our findings unveil a previously undescribed regulatory network governing plant fitness during nitrogen starvation.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in EMBO Reports, Volume 26, Issue 14, 2025, pages 3614-3639.
APA Citation
Li, Y., Cheng, S., Jin, X., Wu, R., Guo, Y., Wu, D., & Dong, J. (2025). DSK2-mediated degradation of F-box protein LAO1 and class I TCPs modulates the nitrogen starvation response. EMBO Reports, 26(14), 3614–3639.https://doi.org/10.1038/s44319-025-00491-9
Rights
© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.