Role of AT2G37050 gene in response to cadmium ion in Arabidopsis thaliana

 Cadmium is a highly toxic and widespread soil pollutant threatening human and animal. Plants effectively help to eliminate environmental pollution by up taking of heavy metals and tolerate cadmium stress through a variety of mechanisms, but biochemical pathways and genes involved in the response of plants to cadmium stress have not been fully and comprehensively identified.  

Following proteomic studies on the Arabidopsis thaliana mutant in which AT2G37050 (receptor like kinase gene) was knocked-out, it was identified that 150 proteins that were present in the wild (control) plant have been disappeared in the mutant plant. In current study, biological function of AT2G37050 gene/GO terms has been investigated by GeneMANIA and agriGO algorithms. GO term is a controlled vocabulary system describing biological entities in three aspects (biological process, molecular function, and cellular component) in different organisms.  

Bioinformatics studies resulted from the GeneMANIA algorithm showed that the AT2G37050 gene is involved in the biological process of response to cadmium ion. The agriGO algorithm was then used to study GO terms at three levels of biological process, molecular function and cellular component, and role of the AT2G37050 gene and biological process of response to cadmium ion was reconfirmed. In addition, significant GO terms (FDR <0.05) such as "extracellular region", "plasmodesmata", "vacuole membrane" and "chloroplast" are associated with the mechanisms involved in plant tolerance to cadmium stress. This is another supporting evidence, which shows association of AT2G37050 gene and "response to cadmium ion". 

In addition to suggesting a new effective gene in response to cadmium stress, the result of current study can be considered in order to construction of transgenic plants, which are able to purify soil from cadmium contamination.