Participating Faculty
B. W. Poovaiah

Regents Professor
Horticulture
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-6414

Ph.D., 1969
Utah State University

Phone: 509-335-2487
Email: poovaiah@wsu.edu

 

Research Interests:

Plant Reproduction

Research Summary:
This laboratory has a long-standing interest in studying the Ca2+/calmodulin-mediated signaling in plants using approaches involving biotechnology/molecular biology. Calmodulin (CaM), a ubiquitous and multifunctional Ca2+-binding protein, is a primary intracellular Ca2+ receptor, which transduces the second messenger Ca2+ signal by binding to and altering the activity of the other proteins. To study the downstream elements involved in Ca2+/CaM-mediated stress signal transduction, 35S-labeled CaM was used for protein-protein interaction-based screening of several expression libraries. By this approach, we have cloned and characterized several genes that encode for CaM-binding proteins. The primary goal of this research is to investigate the functional significance of these genes, and understand how they are involved in Ca2+/CaM-mediated signaling. Ca2+/CaM-regulated protein phosphorylation is believed to play a pivotal role in amplifying and diversifying the action of Ca2+-mediated signals. This laboratory has cloned a chimeric Ca2+/CaM-dependent protein kinase (CCaMK) gene. CCaMK is characterized by the presence of a kinase domain, an autoinhibitory domain, a CaM-binding domain and a neural visinin-like Ca2+-binding domain in a single polypeptide. This laboratory has also cloned a Ca2+/CaM-dependent receptor-like kinase, and the role of this and other CaM-binding proteins are being investigated. Furthermore, this laboratory is also involved in studying calcium/calmodulin-mediated transcriptional networks involved in signal transduction in plants. Several patents have been obtained related to this biotechnology research [U.S. patents: No. 5, 498, 533 (1996); No. 6, 077, 991 (2000); No. 6, 362, 395 (2002) and No. 6, 403, 352 (2002)].

Representative Publications:

Yang, T. and Poovaiah, B.W. 2000. An early ethylene up-regulated gene encoding a calmodulin-binding protein involved in plant senescence and death. J. Biol. Chem. 275: 38467-38473.

Sathyanarayanan, P.V., Cremo, C.R. and Poovaiah, B.W. 2000. Plant chimeric Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase: Role of the neural visinin-like domain in regulating autophosphorylation and calmodulin affinity. J. Biol. Chem. 39: 30417-30422.

Yang, T. and Poovaiah, B.W. 2000. Arabidopsis chloroplast chaperonin 10 is a calmodulin-binding protein. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 275: 601-607.

Sathyanarayanan, P.V., William F. Siems, Jeffrey P. Jones and B.W. Poovaiah. 2001. Calcium-stimulated autophosphorylation site of plant chimeric calcium/calmodulin dependent protein kinase. J. Biol. Chem. 276: 32940-32947.

Poovaiah, B.W., Wang, W. and Yang, T. 2001. Novel calcium/calmodulin-modulated proteins: chimeric protein kinase and small auxin up RNA protein. In: Signal Transduction in Plants: Current Advances, Eds. S.K. Sopory, R. Oelmuller and S.C. Maheshwari, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.

Yang, T. and Poovaiah, B.W. 2002. Hydrogen peroxide homeostasis: Activation of plant catalase by calcium/calmodulin. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 99: 4097-4102.

Sathyanarayanan, P.V. and B.W. Poovaiah. 2002. Autophosphorylation-dependent inactivation of plant chimeric calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase. Eur. J. Biochem. 269: 2457-2463.

Yang, T. and Poovaiah, B. W. 2002. A Calmodulin-binding CGCG box DNA-binding protein family involved in multiple signaling pathways in plants. J. Biol. Chem. 277: 45049-45058.

Yang, T. and Poovaiah, B.W. 2003. Calcium/calmodulin-mediated signal network in plants. Trends Plant Sci. 8:505-512.

Du, L. and Poovaiah, B. W. 2004. A novel family of Ca2+/calmodulin-binding proteins involved in transcriptional regulation: Interaction with fsh/Ring3 class transcription activators. Plant Mol. Biol. 54: 549-569.

Yang, T., Chaudhuri, S., Yang, L., Chen, Y., and Poovaiah, B. W. 2004. Calcium/calmodulin upregulates a cytoplasmic receptor-like kinase. J. Biol. Chem. 279: 42552-42559.

Du, L. and Poovaiah, B. W. 2005. Calcium/calmodulin is critical for brassinosteroid biosynthesis and plant growth, Nature, 437:741-745.

Gleason, C. Chaudhuri, S., Yang, T., Munoz-Gutierrez, A., Poovaiah, B.W. and Oldroyd, G.E.D. 2006 Legume nodulation independent of rhizobia is induced by a modified calcium/calmodulin activated kinase lacking autoinhibition, Nature 2006 Jun 29;441(7097):1149-52.