Comparative proteomic study and functional analysis of translationally controlled tumor protein in rice roots under Hg2+ stress

So far, very little is known about mercury stress-induced intercellular metabolic changes in rice roots at the proteome level. To investigate the response of rice roots to mercury stress, changes in protein expression in rice roots were analyzed using a comparative proteomics approach. Six-leaf stage rice seedlings were treated with 50 mu mol/L HgCl2 for 3 hr; 29 protein spots showed a significant changes in abundance under stress when compared with the Hg2+-tolerant rice mutant and wild type (Zhonghua 11). Furthermore, all these protein spots were identified by mass spectrometry to match 27 diverse protein species. The identified proteins were involved in several processes, including stress response, redox homeostasis, signal transduction, regulation and metabolism; some were found to be cellular structure proteins and a few were unknown. Among the up-regulated proteins, OsTCTP (translationally controlled tumor protein) was chosen to perform hetereologous expression in yeast which was presumed to participate in the Hg2+ tolerance of rice, providing evidence for its role in alleviating Hg2+ damage. Among the many tests, we found that OsTCTP-overexpressed yeast strains were more resistant to Hg2+ than wild-type yeast. Thus, we propose that OsTCTP contributes to Hg2+ resistance. Here we present, for the first time, the functional characterization of OsTCTP in connection with Hg2+ stress in plants.