Salt and drought stress signal transduction consists of ionic and osmotic homeostasis signaling pathways, detoxification (i.e., damage control and repair) response pathways, and pathways for growth regulation. The ionic aspect of salt stress is signaled via the SOS pathway where a calcium-responsive SOS3-SOS2 protein kinase complex controls the expression and activity of ion transporters such a...

Signaling peptides play crucial roles in plant growth, development and defense. We report here that the Arabidopsis thaliana secreted peptide, ROOT MERISTEM GROWTH FACTOR 7 (RGF7), functions as an endogenous elicitor to trigger immunity. Expression of RGF7 precursor-encoding gene (preRGF7) is highly induced leaves upon infection by bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae. The pathogen-responsiv...

the ds-rna activated protein kinase (pkr) is a serine-threonine kinase with mw of 68 kda. it belongs to a family of kinases that control one of the translational initiation factors, eif2. pkr is produced at high level in response to viral infection. this protein by phosphorylating eif2 inhibits cellular protein synthesis. in this study, the effect of gamma interferon (ifn-γ), an activator, and ...

PURPOSE The purpose of this research was to determine whether a correlation exists between the levels of activated mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and Src kinases and the progression from normal to malignant endometrium. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We measured total and phosphorylated levels for extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2, p38, stress-activated protein kinase/c-Jun NH(2)-termin...

The activation of protein kinases is a frequent response of cells to treatment with growth factors, chemicals, heat shock, or apoptosis-inducing agents. However, when several agents result in the activation of the same enzymes, it is unclear how specific biological responses are generated. We describe here two protein kinases that are activated by a subset of stress conditions or apoptotic agen...

Shortly after birth, cardiac myocytes lose the ability to divide, and, in adult animals, heart muscle grows by a process of cellular hypertrophy where each individual cell gets larger. We have previously shown that activated Ras protein can induce markers of the hypertrophic phenotype, including atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) expression and organization of contractile proteins, and that Ras is...