Data-Mining Bioinformatics: Connecting Adenylate Transport and Metabolic Responses to Stress

Abstract

Adenine nucleotides are essential in countless processes within the cellular metabolism. In plants, ATP is mainly produced in chloroplasts and mitochondria through photophosphorylation and oxidative phosphorylation, respectively. Thus, efficient adenylate transport systems are required for intracellular energy partitioning between the cell organelles. Adenylate carriers present in different subcellular compartments have been previously identified and biochemically characterized in plants. Here, by using data-mining bioinformatics tools, we propose how, and to what extent, these carriers integrate energy metabolism within a plant cell under different environmental conditions. We demonstrate that the expression pattern of the corresponding genes is variable under different environmental conditions, suggesting that specific adenylate carriers have distinct and nonredundant functions in plants.

Keywords: adenylate carriers; expression analysis; stress response; systems biology.