Poster: Intracellular Signaling

Abs # 828: VDAC is a conserved element of death pathways in plant and animal systems.

Presenter:	Godbole, Ashwini , ashwini@ncbs.res.in
Authors	Godbole, Ashwini  (A)   Varghese, Jishy  (A)   Sarin, Apurva  (A)   Mathew, M. K. (A)
Affiliations:	(A): National Centre fro Biol. Sci.

The mitochondrion serves as an integrator of many apoptotic signals in animal cells, releasing intermembrane proteins into the cytosol during cell death. Apoptotic release of mitochondrial intermembrane contents require the involvement of a major outer mitochondrial membrane transporter, the Voltage-Dependent Anion Channel (VDAC). Interestingly, many of the established parallels between plant and mammalian cell death programs involve the mitochondrion. Mammalian proteins, such as members of the Bcl-2 family, have been shown to modulate cell death in plants. An alternative approach for characterizing pathways of cell death in plants, is to investigate the functioning of putative plant components of the pathway in a mammalian apoptotic context. Overexpression of a rice VDAC in the Jurkat T-cell line induces apoptosis, which can be blocked by Bcl-2 and the VDAC-inhibitor DIDS. Finally, we show that DIDS also abrogates cell death in plant systems subjected to heat stress. Our data suggest that the VDAC is a conserved element of the machinery utilized by mitochondria to participate in programmed cell death in both plants and animal cells. Internal NCBS grant and Department of Science and Technology, India, grant.