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Functional Plant Biology Functional Plant Biology Society
Plant function and evolutionary biology
RESEARCH ARTICLE

The role of EGY2 protease in response to high light stress

Robert Luciński https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3289-4996 A * , Jędrzej Dobrogojski B , Takao Ishikawa C and Małgorzata Adamiec A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Adam Mickiewicz University, Faculty of Biology, Institute of Experimental Biology, Department of Plant Physiology, Poznań, Poland.

B University of Life Sciences, Faculty of Agronomy, Horticulture and Bioengineering, Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Poznań, Poland.

C University of Warsaw, Faculty of Biology, Institute of Microbiology, Department of Environmental Microbiology and Biotechnology, ul. Miecznikowa 1, 02–096 Warszawa, Poland.

* Correspondence to: rtl@amu.edu.pl

Handling Editor: Suleyman Allakhverdiev

Functional Plant Biology 51, FP23243 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP23243
Submitted: 17 October 2023  Accepted: 14 December 2023  Published: 9 January 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the importance of one of the intramembrane proteases, EGY2, for the proper functioning of PSII under short-term high light stress conditions. EGY2 is a chloroplast intramembrane protease of the S2P family, whose absence in Arabidopsis thaliana affects PSII protein composition. The egy2 mutants exhibited a slower degradation of PsbA and decreased content of PsbC and PsbD. During exposure to high light stress, these stoichiometric changes affect the functional state of PSII, leading to its higher sensitivity to photoinhibition of the PSII reaction centre and increased heat dissipation. Furthermore, we explored the relationship between EGY2 and the pTAC16 transcription factor, which is a potential EGY2 substrate. Under light stress, WT plants showed decreased levels of pTAC16, while it remained unchanged in the egy2 mutants. This finding suggests that EGY2 may release pTAC16 from thylakoid membranes through proteolytic cleavage. We also confirmed the physical interaction between EGY2 and pTAC16 using the yeast two-hybrid system, providing evidence of EGY2’s involvement in the regulation of PsbA and PsbC/PsbD operons by releasing pTAC16 from the thylakoid membrane.

Keywords: Arabidopsis thaliana, chloroplast, EGY2, intramembrane proteases, photosynthesis, photosystem II, regulated intramembrane proteolysis, transcription factor.

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