Abstract
The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) plays an important role in freezing tolerance in plants. Treatment with ABA increased freezing tolerance of protonema cells of the moss Physcomitrella patens. ABA triggered morphological changes in cellular organelles, such as reduction in sizes of chloroplasts and vacuoles, and physiological changes such as accumulation of soluble sugars, especially that of sucrose, and boiling-stable proteins. We used protein synthesis inhibitors, protein serine/threonine kinase inhibitors and protein serine/threonine phosphatase inhibitors to examine cellular events associated with ABA-induced freezing tolerance. The results indicated that a protein synthesis inhibitor cycloheximide dramatically decreased freezing tolerance of the ABA-treated cells and accumulation of boiling-stable proteins. A phosphatase inhibitor okadaic acid also decreased ABA-induced freezing tolerance in P. patens. These inhibitors, however, did not have any effect on ABA-induced accumulation of sucrose. These results suggest critical roles of de novo synthesis of nuclear encoded protein and phosphatase-mediated signal transduction in ABA-induced cellular processes leading to freezing tolerance, and that sucrose only plays a limited role in these processes.
