Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2011, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (2): 224-232.DOI: 10.3724/SP.J.1259.2011.00224

Previous Articles    

Research Advances in Plant RACK1 Proteins

Dahong Li1,2, Dongping Zhang1, Dandan Cao1, Jiansheng Liang1*   

  1. 1College of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225009, China

    2Department of Agronomy and Forestry, Huanghuai University, Zhumadian 463000, China
  • Received:2010-06-18 Revised:2010-10-24 Online:2011-03-01 Published:2011-05-09
  • Contact: Jiansheng Liang

Abstract: The receptor for activated C kinase 1 (RACK1) is a tryptophan-aspartic acid-domain (WD40) repeat protein. Compelling evidence supports that RACK1 is a versatile scaffold protein that binds numerous signaling molecules from diverse signal transduction pathways and plays critical roles in multiple developmental processes in mammals. RACK1 orthologs are also present in plants. In particular, the Arabidopsis genome contains genes that encode 3 RACK1 proteins, all of which show greater than 75% amino acid similarity to mammalian RACK1. In addition, all functional domains of RACK1 protein, including the number and position of WD40 repeats and the protein kinase C binding sites, are largely conserved in plant RACK1 proteins. We review the discovery, structure and signal transduction functions of plant RACK1.