Abstract
Target of rapamycin (TOR) is an evolutionarily conserved kinase that controls many cellular function including cell growth, proliferation and translation in response to environmental cues. Although little is known about the plant TOR pathway, recent research showed that TOR signaling is involved in the regulation of cell wall structure, autophagy as well as cell growth.
TOR is found in two functionally distinct complexes, TORC1 and TORC2 in yeast and animals. In plant, homologs of components of TORC2 and regulators of TORC in animal and yeast have not found, indicating that plants have specific TOR signaling pathway.
To investigate the plant TOR signaling pathway, we cloned cDNA for components of rice TORC1. When rice TOR gene was introduced in yeast TOR functional mutant, it did not complement the function of either TORC1 or TORC2 in yeast. Here, biochemical characterization of rice TOR will be discussed.
