ИСТИНА

Plant proteins unusually named as 14-3-3 are known as regulators of key physiological processes in plants. Numerous studies indicate their importance in gaining agriculturally important traits, for instance, starch accumulation, resistance to drought and salt stresses, plant immunity. Despite nearly 30 years of research, the plant 14-3-3 protein family remains poorly characterized at the molecular level. The protein sequence analysis classifies plant 14-3-3s onto two large phylogenetic groups called epsilon and non-epsilon groups, however, the biochemical and functional criteria underpinning the phylogeny are missing. We systematically analyzed 14-3-3 proteins from phylogenetically distant plants and revealed how the phylogenetic group affiliation of a certain 14-3-3 contributes to the protein stability, which provides new routes towards molecular studies of plant stress resistance and incites new hypotheses in fields of molecular adaptations and protein evolution.