The plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) is involved in plant development as well as in adaptation processes to drought, high salt or water stress. The focus of this work lies on the characterisation of the PP2C phosphatase ABI1, a key regulator in ABA signalling, and its interaction partner ATHB6, an HD-Zip transcription factor. The functional analysis of a putative ABI1 nuclear localisation signal (NLS) performed in transiently transformed Arabidopsis protoplasts as well as in stable Arabidopsis overexpressing lines revealed strong dependence on the NLS functionality for the negative regulatory ABI1 function on ABA-dependent promoter activation (RD29B, RAB18) as well as on ABA-regulated physiological processes (germination, root growth or stomata regulation). Studies on subcellular localisation of ABI1 and abi1 reporter fusions display a stronger nuclear accumulation for GFP-abi1 than for GFP-ABI1 in guard cells, epidermal root cells and root meristem cells of 35SS1::GFP-abi1 lines. The preferential nuclear localisation of the mutated PP2C phosphatase might provide a new explanation for the dominant ABA-insensitive phenotype of abi1-plants.
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The plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) is involved in plant development as well as in adaptation processes to drought, high salt or water stress. The focus of this work lies on the characterisation of the PP2C phosphatase ABI1, a key regulator in ABA signalling, and its interaction partner ATHB6, an HD-Zip transcription factor. The functional analysis of a putative ABI1 nuclear localisation signal (NLS) performed in transiently transformed Arabidopsis protoplasts as well as in stable Arabidopsis...
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