Generating and maintaining jasmonic acid in Arabidopsis

Abstract

Jasmonic acid (JA) is a lipid-derived plant hormone that mediates diverse biological phenomena. It is one of major goals in JA research field to elucidate the regulatory mechanism of JA level. Recently we have demonstrated cooperative and differentiated roles of two chloroplast localized galactolipases, DGL (DONGLE) and DAD1 (DEFECTIVE IN ANTHER DEHISCENCE 1), for the regulation of JA content. The DGL maintains a basal level of JA in unwounded vegetative tissues, while the DAD1 is involved in JA production in floral tissues. The JA in vegetative tissues regulates cell expansion while the JA produced in flowers regulates pollen maturation. After wounding, the cooperative function of DGL and DAD1 causes drastic increase of JA. The analysis of induction kinetics showed that the two enzymes have temporally separated roles in wound response; DGL in early phase and DAD1 in late phase of JA production. In this addendum, we discuss the implications of our recent findings and extend our working model for JA homeostasis in plants.