Protein S-acylation in plants (Review)

Membrane resident proteins are a common feature of biology yet many of these proteins are not integral to the membrane. These peripheral membrane proteins are often bound to the membrane by the addition of fatty acyl chains to the protein. This modification, known as S-acylation or palmitoylation, promotes very strong membrane association but is also reversible allowing for a high degree of control over membrane association. Many S-acylated proteins are resident in sterol, sphingolipid and saturated-lipid enriched microdomains indicating an important role for S-acylation in protein partitioning within membranes. This review summarises the current knowledge of S-acylation in plants. S-acylated proteins play a wide variety of roles in plants and affect Ca2+ signalling, K+ movement, stress signalling, small and heterotrimeric G-protein membrane association and partitioning, tubulin function as well as pathogenesis. Although the study of S-acylation is in its infancy in plants this review illustrates that S-acylation is extremely important for plant function and that there are many unexplored aspects of S-acylation in plants. A full summary of the techniques and methods available to study S-acylation in plants is also presented.