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PLANT BIOLOGY: A Plant ABC Transporter Takes the Lotus Seat
Burkhard Schulz and Wolf B. Frommer
The surfaces of plants (principally leaves and stems) exposed to the air are covered in a wax cuticle that prevents them from drying out. In their
Perspective, Schulz and Frommer discuss a step toward elucidating the complex lipid export pathway that transports hydrophobic wax precursor molecules from the endoplasmic reticulum, where they are synthesized across the plasma membrane, to the surface of plant cells, where they are assembled into the cuticular layer (Pighin et al.). It turns out that, like animal cells, plant cells have an ABC transporter protein called CER5 that transports hydrophobic wax precursor molecules across the plant cell plasma membrane.
B. Schulz is in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA. W. B. Frommer is in the Department of Plant Biology, Carnegie Institution, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. E-mail: wfrommer{at}stanford.edu
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In Science Magazine
REPORTS
Jamie A. Pighin, Huanquan Zheng, Laura J. Balakshin, Ian P. Goodman, Tamara L. Western, Reinhard Jetter, Ljerka Kunst, and A. Lacey Samuels (22 October 2004) Science306 (5696), 702.
[DOI: 10.1126/science.1102331] |Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »|Supporting Online Material »
THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
The Arabidopsis DESPERADO/AtWBC11 Transporter Is Required for Cutin and Wax Secretion.
D. Panikashvili, S. Savaldi-Goldstein, T. Mandel, T. Yifhar, R. B. Franke, R. Hofer, L. Schreiber, J. Chory, and A. Aharoni (2007)
Plant Physiology
145, 1345-1360
|Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »
