JXB Advance Access originally published online on September 12, 2006
Journal of Experimental Botany 2006 57(14):3583-3594; doi:10.1093/jxb/erl104
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RESEARCH PAPER |
Phosphorylation of SPICK2, an AKT2 channel homologue from Samanea motor cells

1The Robert H. Smith Institute for Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture, Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot 76100, Israel
2Julius-von-Sachs-Insitute, Department of Botany I: Molecular Plant Physiology and Biophysics, University of Wuerzburg, Julius-von-Sachs-Platz 2, D-97082 Wuerzburg, Germany
3Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
4Department of Physiology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel
5Department of Biological Chemistry, Weizmann Instititute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: nava.moran{at}huji.ac.il
SPICK2, a homologue of the weakly-inward-rectifying Shaker-like Arabidopsis K channel, AKT2, is a candidate K+-influx channel participating in light- and clock-regulated leaf movements of the legume, Samanea saman. Light and the biological clock regulate the in situ K+-influx channel activity differentially in extensor and flexor halves of the pulvinus (the S. saman leaf motor organ), and alsothough differentlythe transcript level of SPICK2 in the pulvinus. This disparity between the in situ channel activity versus its candidate transcript, along with the sequence analysis of SPICK2, suggest an in situ regulation of the activity of SPICK2, possibly by phosphorylation and/or by interaction with cAMP. Consistent with this (i) the activity of the voltage-dependent K+-selective fraction of the inward current in extensor and flexor cells was affected differentially in whole-cell patchclamp assays promoting phosphorylation (using the protein phosphatase inhibitor okadaic acid); (ii) several proteins in isolated plasma membrane-enriched vesicles of the motor cells underwent phosphorylation without an added kinase in conditions similar to patchclamp; and (iii) the SPICK2 protein was phosphorylated in vitro by the catalytic subunit of the broad-range cAMP-dependent protein kinase. All of these results are consistent with the notion that SPICK2 is the K+-influx channel, and is regulated in vivo directly by phosphorylation.
Key words: AKT2, gating, kinase, motor cells, nucleotides, phosphorylation, PKA, potassium channel, selectivity, Samanea