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6. Signaling and Response Mechanisms

The disassembly and hydrolysis of polysaccharides after their function in the wall is complete. Wall disassembly is typically associated with fruit ripening or the digestion of the storage tissue walls during seed germination, but such processes occur throughout development in all cells. Over 170 Arabidopsis genes are suspected to encode pectin degrading enzymes alone (Henrissat et al. 2001). Plants with Type I and II walls have also developed different repertories of hydrolases that function in disassembly of their different cell wall polysaccharides (Hrmova and Fincher 2001). Part of the disassembly of the wall by differentiating cells includes the salvage of sugars into the nucleotide-sugar interconversion pathway. Defects in this pathway would lead an inability to recycle sugars and potentially lead to reduced content.

Henrissat, B., P. M. Coutinho, G. J. Davies. 2001. A census of carbohydrate-active enzymes in the genome of Arabidopsis. Plant Mol. Biol. 47, 55-72.

Hrmova, M., G. B. Fincher. 2001. Structure-function relationships of b-D-glucan endo- and exohydrolases from higher plants. Plant Mol. Biol. 47, 73-91.


ARA1

ARA1 encodes cytosolic C-1 arabinokinase responsible for salvaging arabinose cleaved from cell wall polymers into the nucleotide-sugar pool. The mutant was discovered by the plant’s usual inability to grow on media supplemented with arabinose. Arabinose is toxic in submillimolar amounts, and arabinokinase removes the toxic sugar.

References:

Sherson, S., I. Gy, J. Medd, R. Schmidt, C. Dean, M. Kreis, A. Lecharny, C. Cobbett. 1999. The arabinose kinase, ARA1, gene of Arabidopsis is a novel member of the galactose kinase gene family. Plant Mol. Biol. 39, 1003-1012.

SALK T-DNA: AT3G06580
MIPS: AT3G0658

TAIR: AT3G06580


  6.1 Generation of signal molecules
  6.2 Reactive-oxygen species generation
  6.3 Receptor-like kinases and their ligands
  6.4 Glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored proteins

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