Abstract
In the past decade, small secreted peptides have proven to be essential for various aspects of plant growth and development, including the maintenance of certain stem cell populations. Most small secreted peptides identified in plants to date are recognized by membrane-localized receptor kinases, the largest family of receptor proteins in the plant genome. This peptide-receptor interaction is essential for initiating intracellular signaling cascades. Small secreted peptides often undergo post-translational modifications and proteolytic processing to generate the mature peptides. Recent studies suggest that, in contrast to the situation in mammals, the proteolytic processing of plant peptides involves a number of complex steps. Furthermore, NMR-based structural analysis demonstrated that post-translational modifications induce the conformational changes needed for full activity. In this mini review, we summarize recent advances in our understanding of how small secreted peptides are modified and processed into biologically active peptides and describe the mature structures of small secreted peptides in plants.
INTRODUCTION
Studies of small secreted peptides have flourished since the characterisation of insulin from animals in the early 1920s. The importance of small secreted peptides in cell-to-cell communication has been recognized in animals for many years. However, in plants, interest in small secreted peptides has been overshadowed by that in lipophilic non-peptide hormones, such as auxin and cytokinin (; ; ). The first plant small secreted peptide to be reported, tomato systemin (TomSys), was discovered in wounded tomato leaves (; ). This peptide activates the expression of proteinase inhibitors (), which interfere with the ability of attacking pests to digest protein (). The biochemical purification of TomSys based on its proteinase inhibitor-inducing activity led to the identification of an 18-amino acid polypeptide (). Over the past decade or two, the identification of several small secreted peptides has revealed that a variety of important developmental processes in plants are mediated by small secreted peptides. For example, small secreted peptides are critical players in the maintenance of stem cell populations in shoots and roots (; ; ; ), in self-incompatibility (; ), and in stomatal patterning (). In plants, small secreted peptides are mainly recognized by a membrane-associated leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase (LRR-RLK). Phytosulfokine (PSK), which was identified as a growth-promoting signal involved in the conditioning effect of plant cell cultures (), was initially demonstrated to directly interact with an LRR-RLK (). The PSK receptor, PSKR1, was purified from microsomal fractions of Daucus carota (carrot) cells by ligand-based affinity chromatography (). To date, several ligand (peptide)-receptor pairs have been identified based on biochemical and genetic analyzes (; ; ). This interaction between a peptide and receptor kinase is a pivotal mechanism for mediating signal input into intracellular signaling pathways.
Small secreted peptides often undergo post-translational modifications, including tyrosine sulfation, proline hydroxylation, hydroxyproline arabinosylation, and proteolytic processing, to yield the mature peptides. These processing steps are thought to affect the affinity of the peptides for their cognate receptors and their ability to activate these receptors (; ). In this mini review, we summarize recent advances in our understanding of how small secreted peptides are modified and processed into biologically active peptides. We also describe recent NMR-based structural analyzes of plant small secreted peptides and discuss the relationship between the functional specificity and structure of small secreted peptides.
OVERVIEW OF THE BIOSYNTHETIC PATHWAY OF SECRETED PEPTIDES
Plant small secreted peptides are classified into three groups based on their biosynthetic pathway: small post-translationally modified peptides, cysteine-rich peptides, and intermediate-type peptides (; ; Figure 1). The genes encoding the secreted peptides are initially transcribed and then translated as pre-propeptides. This process is followed by the removal of the N-terminal signal peptide by signal peptidase. The produced propeptides are further modified by several enzymes, yielding functional mature peptides (Figure 1).
FIGURE 1
The first group of small secreted peptides, the small post-translationally modified peptides, consists of <20 amino acids. The propeptides corresponding to the mature peptides consist of approximately 70–120 amino acids and contain few or no cysteine residues. Several small post-translationally modified secreted peptides involved in plant growth and development have been identified, including PSK (
The second group of small secreted peptides, cysteine-rich peptides, are characterized by the presence of an even number of cysteine residues (typically six or eight), which are required for the formation of disulfide bonds that maintain the mature peptide in an active conformation (Figure 1;
The third group, the intermediate-type peptides, is intermediate between the small post-translationally modified peptides and the cysteine-rich peptides. Although intermediate-type peptides have intramolecular disulfide bonds, these peptides are also produced via proteolytic processing (Figure 1). In these peptides, the cysteine residues are located within the C-terminal region of the propeptides. Stomagen, which belongs to the EPIDERMAL PATTERNING FACTOR (EPF) peptide family and is a positive regulator of stomatal density, is a representative example of this group (
POST-TRANSLATIONAL MODIFICATIONS
Three types of post-translational modification, i.e., tyrosine sulfation, proline hydroxylation, and hydroxyproline arabinosylation, are involved in the maturation of small post-translationally modified peptides in plants.
Post-translational modification by tyrosine sulfation occurs widely in multicellular eukaryotic organisms (
Proline hydroxylation is catalyzed by prolyl-4-hydroxylase (P4H), which is a type II membrane protein with an N-terminal transmembrane domain and is localized in both the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi (
The hydroxyproline residues of several secreted peptide signals are further modified with an O-linked L-arabinose chain (tri-arabinoside) via β-1,2-bonds (
In cysteine-rich peptides, correct disulfide bond formation is essential for maintaining the mature peptide in an active conformation (
PROTEOLYTIC PROCESSING
Proteolytic processing is critical for the formation of mature functional peptides from pro-peptides of small post-translationally modified peptides and some cysteine-rich peptides. In animals, cleavage of the precursor polypeptide has been shown to occur on the C-terminal side of paired basic amino acids by subtilisin/kexin-like pro-protein and pro-hormone convertases (
A recent study showed that SUPPRESSOR OF LLP1 1 (SOL1), a putative Zn2+ carboxypeptidase previously isolated as a suppressor of the CLE19 over-expression phenotype (
STOMATAL DENSITY AND DISTRIBUTION (SDD1) is a subtilisin-like extracellular protease that is involved in the proteolytic processing of cysteine-rich peptides and is thought to play a role in the processing of EPF1 (
STRUCTURES OF SECRETED PEPTIDES
Recent structural studies revealed the molecular basis of the biological activities of plant small secreted peptides. The active form of the CLV3 peptide, which belongs to the small post-translationally modified group of small secreted peptides, has been characterized by NMR-based structural analysis (
FIGURE 2

Structures of small secreted peptides. (A) The mature form of the CLAVATA3 peptide. Hydroxylated proline residues are indicated by asterisks. (B) Ribbon models of SCR/SP11 and stomagen presented from two perspectives. The disulfide bonds are depicted as ball-and-stick models with residue name. These models were generated using MOLMOL (
The structure of SCR/SP11, which belongs to the cysteine-rich peptide group of small peptides, has been determined. SCR/SP11 folds into an α/β sandwich motif that resembles that of plant defensins (
The structure of stomagen, an intermediate-type small secreted peptide, has also been determined. Stomagen, which is a member of the EPF family of peptides and is composed of a loop and a scaffold containing three disulfide bonds, contains two anti-parallel β-strands connected by a 14-residue loop (
CONCLUSION
Small secreted peptides have critical roles in cell-to-cell communication during plant growth and development. Recent studies of secreted peptides revealed that post-translational modifications and proteolytic processing are essential for the biological activity and functional specificity of these peptides. However, our understanding of these maturation steps is incomplete. The identification of enzymes, including peptidases, involved in post-translational modification and proteolytic processing will unravel the maturation steps of plant secreted peptides. Biochemical approaches and rapid genetic screens for suppressors/enhancers, using next-generation sequencing technology may be effective strategies for identifying such proteins (
Statements
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Masanori Mishima (Tokyo Metropolitan University) for providing us with the SCR/SP11 and stomagen images. This work was supported by KAKENHI (23119517, 23012034, 24114001, 24114009, 24370024, 24657035, and 24658032).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Summary
Keywords
small secreted peptide, post-translational modification, proteolytic processing, NMR structure
Citation
Tabata R and Sawa S (2014) Maturation processes and structures of small secreted peptides in plants. Front. Plant Sci. 5:311. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2014.00311
Received
05 April 2014
Accepted
11 June 2014
Published
04 July 2014
Volume
5 - 2014
Edited by
Hirofumi Nakagami, RIKEN, Japan
Reviewed by
Benjamin Schwessinger, University of California, Davis, USA; Nijat Imin, The Australian National University, Australia
Copyright
© 2014 Tabata and Sawa.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Ryo Tabata, Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, Aichi 464-8602, Japane-mail: tabata.ryo@h.mbox.nagoya-u.ac.jp
†Present address: Ryo Tabata, Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Nagoya 464-8602, Japan
This article was submitted to Plant Proteomics, a section of the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.
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