Light Signal Pathways: Shangwei Zhong's Team at the Peking University Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences and School of Life Sciences Reveals the Nuclear Translocation Regulation Mechanism of Plant Light-Temperature Receptor phyB
2023-03-18
Light and temperature are significant environmental factors regulating plant growth and development, and they are perceived by the receptor phytochrome B (phyB). In 2022, Shangwei Zhong's team at the Peking University Institute of Advanced Agricultural Sciences and School of Life Sciences unveiled that phyB employs light-controlled protein conformational changes and temperature-controlled liquid-liquid phase separation, facilitating the simultaneous perception of two disparate environmental signals, light and temperature (Molecular Cell 82, 3015-3029). On March 16, 2023, they published a research paper in Cell, titled "Sensory circuitry controls cytosolic calcium-mediated phytochrome B phototransduction". The study discovered that plants utilize a "light-calcium regulatory circuit" to swiftly activate two calcium-dependent protein kinases, which phosphorylate phyB at Ser80 and Ser106, thereby controlling nuclear translocation of phyB. This work concurrently proposes a novel mechanism by which the second cytoplasmic signal calcium ion is decoded into a specific transduction pathway at the receptor level.