ATP Binding Cassette (ABC) Transporters are ATP-dependent membrane proteins critical for most aspects of cell physiology, including the uptake of nutrients (importers) and elimination of waste products and energy generation (exporters) which are predominantly expressed in excretory organs, such as the liver, intestine, blood-brain barrier, blood-testes barrier, placenta, and kidney[1][2].
Function
Plant ABC transporters play a role in polar transport of auxin, lipid degradation, detoxification of exogenous toxins, plantresistance of disease and heavy metals.For example,it shows functional regulation in many processes such as the transport of iron ions in marine anguillarum cells, regulation of calcium ions content in yeast cell vacuole and so on. Studies have shown that ABC proteins played a certain role in biotic and abiotic stress responses of plants,such as detoxification of aluminum toxicity by vacuolar segmentation.Because of its photosynthesis and a large number of secondary metabolite synthesis and detoxification,plant needs more transport-related function protein, and thus it contain more ABC family members.Since whole-genome sequencing of arabidopsis and rice work has been completed, the sequence analysis showed that the genome of Arabidopsis and rice, respectively, caontain 129 and 128 ABC transporter gene.
3D Structures of rice ABC transporter
Structural highlights
