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Science 330 (6009): 1393-1397

Copyright © 2010 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Arabidopsis Type I Metacaspases Control Cell Death

Nuria S. Coll,1 Dominique Vercammen,2,* Andrea Smidler,1 Charles Clover,1,{dagger} Frank Van Breusegem,2 Jeffery L. Dangl,1,3,4,{ddagger} Petra Epple1,{ddagger}

Abstract: Metacaspases are distant relatives of animal caspases found in protozoa, fungi, and plants. Limited experimental data exist defining their function(s), despite their discovery by homology modeling a decade ago. We demonstrated that two type I metacaspases, AtMC1 and AtMC2, antagonistically control programmed cell death in Arabidopsis. AtMC1 is a positive regulator of cell death and requires conserved caspase-like putative catalytic residues for its function. AtMC2 negatively regulates cell death. This function is independent of the putative catalytic residues. Manipulation of the Arabidopsis type I metacaspase regulatory module can nearly eliminate the hypersensitive cell death response (HR) activated by plant intracellular immune receptors. This does not lead to enhanced pathogen proliferation, decoupling HR from restriction of pathogen growth.

1 Department of Biology, 108 Coker Hall, University of North Carolina (UNC), CB 3280, Chapel Hill, NC 27599–3280, USA.
2 VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology and Department of Plant Biotechnology and Genetics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.
3 Curriculum in Genetics and Molecular Biology and Department of Microbiology and Immunology, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
4 Carolina Center for Genome Sciences, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.

* Present address: Innogenetics, Technologiepark 6, 9052 Ghent, Belgium.

{dagger} Present address: Department of Anesthesiology, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Medical Center Boulevard, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, USA.

{ddagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: pepple{at}email.unc.edu (P.E.); dangl{at}email.unc.edu (J.L.D.)

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