Exploitable results
The manipulation of signal transduction pathways controlling responses to adverse environmental conditions is likely to be the most effective way to generate stress tolerant crop plants, as it will allow the manipulation of whole resistance traits. CAST has systematically dissected the signal transduction pathways involved in activating pathogen defence responses and cold tolerance. A major achievement has been to dissect and order the initial events occurring in a plant cell following pathogen attack. Morphological changes include cell wall thickening, cytoskeleton rearrangements, and movement of the nucleus towards the infection site, while biochemical changes include the generation of active oxygen species and calcium, and the activation of several protein kinases. In parallel, several genes induced during cold-acclimation have been identified and it has been found that calcium, protein kinases and phosphatases are signals controlling their expression. In parallel a range of putative cold signalling mutants have been isolated. In addition to these new molecular tools, the CAST team has identified a range of intermediate signal transduction molecules such as calcium channels, and calcium and cyclic nucleotide regulated proteins such as kinases and transcription factors. The role of these intermediates in mediating responses to pathogens and cold stress is under investigation and in one notable example two tyrosine kinases induced during pathogen infection were found to be related to previously identified wound- and salicylic acid-induced protein kinases. This interesting result therefore demonstrates that plants sense different stresses using the same network of signalling components and that extensive cross-talk is involved. Manipulation of such substrates in transgenic plants is therefore likely to result in interesting stress tolerant phenotypes.
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