Functional and regulatory conservation of the soybean ER stress-induced DCD/NRP-mediated cell death signaling in plants.

Background: The developmental and cell death domain (DCD)-containing asparagine-rich proteins (NRPs) were first identified in soybean (Glycine max) as transducers of a cell death signal derived from prolonged endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, osmotic stress, drought or developmentally-programmed leaf senescence via the GmNAC81/GmNAC30/GmVPE signaling module. In spite of the relevance of the DCD/NRP-mediated signaling as a versatile adaptive response to multiple stresses, mechanistic knowledge of the pathway is lacking and the extent to which this pathway may operate in the plant kingdom has not been investigated.

Results: Here, we demonstrated that the DCD/NRP-mediated signaling also propagates a stress-induced cell death signal in other plant species with features of a programmed cell death (PCD) response.