title: Vacuolar cell death in plants: Metacaspase releases the brakes on autophagy.
abstract: Vacuolar programmed cell death (PCD) is indispensable for plant development and is accompanied by a dramatic growth of lytic vacuoles, which gradually digest cytoplasmic content leading to self-clearance of dying cells. Our recent data demonstrate that vacuolar PCD critically requires autophagy and its upstream regulator, a caspase-fold protease metacaspase. Furthermore, both components lie downstream of the point of no return in the cell-death pathway. Here we consider the possibilities that i) autophagy could have both cytotoxic and cytoprotective roles in the vacuolar PCD, and ii) metacaspase could augment autophagic flux through targeting an as yet unknown autophagy repressor.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Biology; Uppsala BioCenter; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Linnean Centre for Plant Biology; Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Elena A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Minina
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biological Chemistry; Washington State University; Pullman, WA USA; Institute of Global Food Security; Queen's University Belfast; Belfast, UK.
authors.forename: Andrei P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Smertenko
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Biology; Uppsala BioCenter; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Linnean Centre for Plant Biology; Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Peter V
authors.initials: PV
authors.lastname: Bozhkov
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001343:Autophagy / Q000502:physiology*; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans; D020169:Caspases / Q000502:physiology*; D016923:Cell Death / Q000502:physiology; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster; D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000502:physiology; D010944:Plants / Q000201:enzymology*; D014617:Vacuoles / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D010940:Plant Proteins; D020169:Caspases
keywords: autophagy; embryo-suspensor; metacaspase; necrosis; plants; vacuolar cell death