Author(s)

Di Xi, Leping He, Lei Zhang^*

State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.

Phosphorylation of proteins is an important post-translational modification. Methods to determine the phosphorylation state of proteins are very important to evaluate diverse biological processes. CRK5 is the CDPK-related protein kinase in Arabidopsis, WD-repeat protein (WDRP) might be CRK5-interact-protein based on Y2H results. Here, we used bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) further to study and visualize the interaction between CRK5 and WDRP in living cells. Then, we combined Phos-tag^TM SDS-PAGE with western blot (WB) analysis, using WDRP antibody and the anti-6×His antibody, to detect phosphorylated WDRP. This approach confirmed that WDRP might be phosphorylated by CRK5 in vitro. Site mutation analysis suggested that serine-70 might be the amino acid phosphorylated by CRK5 in WDRP. Cell extracts isolated from WT, OERK5, and crk5 used to analyze the kinase reaction using recombinant WDRP as substrate. These results demonstrated that WDRP was phosphorylated by cell extracts and that there may be additional kinases that phosphorylate WDRP in Arabidopsis. Phos-tag^TM SDS-PAGE thus provides a suitable and convenient method for analysis of phosphorylation in plants.

Calcium-Dependent Protein Kinase (CDPK), CDPK-Related Protein Kinase (CRK), WD-Repeat Protein (WDRP), Protein Phosphorylation, Phos-tag^TM

Xi, D. , He, L. and Zhang, L. (2018) A Highly Sensitive Detection Method, Phos-tag^TM Affinity SDS-PAGE, Used to Analyze a Possible Substrate of CDPK-Related Protein Kinase5 in Arabidopsis. American Journal of Plant Sciences, 9, 1708-1724. doi: 10.4236/ajps.2018.98124.