ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Physiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1671817
StACS3-Mediated Drought Stress Adaptation in Potato Involves Interactions with StPP2C2 and 14-3-3 Proteins
Provisionally accepted- 1University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany
- 2Lahore University of Management Sciences Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering, Lahore, Pakistan
- 3Universitatsmedizin Rostock, Rostock, Germany
- 4Universitat Rostock Agrar- und Umweltwissenschaftliche Fakultat, Rostock, Germany
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Ethylene plays a critical role in plant development and stress adaptation, with its biosynthesis tightly regulated by the stability of 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid synthase (ACS) proteins. Here, we investigate the potato isozyme StACS3 and its role in modulating ethylene biosynthesis and drought tolerance. StACS3 transcript and protein levels are specifically upregulated under drought stress. In contrast, silencing StACS3 significantly reduces stress-induced ethylene accumulation and enhances drought resilience, including decreased cell death and increased antioxidant activity. Heterologous expression of StACS3 in Arabidopsis thaliana induces severe developmental phenotypes, such as compact growth, reduced root development, sterility, and accelerated leaf senescence, demonstrating its influence on ethylene-associated processes. Mechanistically, StACS3 is regulated post-translationally through interactions with StPP2C2, a type 2C protein phosphatase that promotes proteasome-mediated degradation, and St14-3-3, a phospho-binding protein that stabilizes StACS3. Mutation and co-expression analysis support the formation of StACS3-StPP2C2 complexes, and silencing StPP2C2 increases StACS3 accumulation and alters its subcellular localization, demonstrating an antagonistic interplay between degradation and stabilization pathways. Collectively, these findings reveal a dynamic post-translational regulatory module that fine-tunes ethylene biosynthesis during drought stress. This study establishes StACS3 as a central node in ethylene-mediated drought response pathways in potatoes, providing mechanistic insights into the balance of protein degradation and stabilization that underlies stress adaptation.
Keywords: Solanum tuberosum, Drought stress, Ethylene biogenesis, Phosphorylation, ACC synthase, PP2C phosphatase, 14-3-3 protein
Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 09 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hamera, Chaudhary, Lemcke, Sklorz, Schilling, Schumacher, Huckauf, Zimmerman, Horn and Uptmoor. 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:
Sadia Hamera, hamera2010@gmail.com
Renate Horn, renate.horn@uni-rostock.de
Ralf Uptmoor, ralf.uptmoor@uni-rostock.de
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.