Rice heterotrimeric g protein signaling

Abstract

Signaling pathways regulated by heterotrimeric G proteins are well known to be essential in eukaryotic organisms. In the last decade, it has been shown that plants also have genes for the canonical subunits of heterotrimeric G proteins. The genomes of rice and Arabidopsis thaliana have only a single copy gene for each of the α, β and γ1 subunits. This situation is in contrast to mammalian genomes that contain multiple genes for each of the 23 α, 6 β and 12 γ subunits. This is a striking characteristic of higher plant heterotrimeric G proteins. In this chapter, we will summarize the subunits of rice heterotrimeric G proteins and discuss the possible functions of the G proteins in rice and Arabidopsis.