REALISATION OF STRESS-INDUCED AUTOPHAGY IN PLANTS WITH PARTICIPATION OF MICROTUBULES
Processes associated with programmed cell death (PCD) and autophagy are highly conservative intracellular mechanisms that provide a wide range of functions covering a variety of cellular events from development to survival. Although, the morphology of plant PCD is, in some cases, well-characterized and molecular mechanisms, controlling plant PCD are beginning to emerge, there is still confusion about the classification of PCD in plants. According to morphological features of plant PCD, at least two classes of PCD can be distinguished: vacuolar cell death and necrosis. The process of autophagy is one of the key elements that accompany the development of vacuolar cell death in plants. However, autophagy, as a discrete process, plays an important role in maintaining of cell homeostasis and performs an adaptive role during plant development and survival. Autophagic protein and organelle degradation/recycling is a fundamental mechanism of cellular maintenance and survival. Important role of microtubules (MTs) in the regulation of autophagy development is widely described for yeasts and animal cells. In these cells MTs are involved as a part of the machinery in maturation and traffic of autophagosomes via their dynamic structural changes and tubulin posttranslational modifications, in particular, acetylation. To investigate the relationships between MTs and stress-induced autophagy, an expression profiling of α-tubulin and atg 8 isotypes was performed. It was observed that the overexpression of certain isotypes of atg 8 and α-tubulin genes was dependent on the defined stress types under autophagy development, which also underlines the functional role of microtubules in adaptive cellular processes in plants.