Stress responsive gene CIPK14 is involved in phytochrome A-mediated far-red light inhibition of greening in Arabidopsis.

In this study, we show that CIPK14, a stress responsive CBL-interacting protein kinase gene, is involved in phytochrome A-mediated far-red light inhibition of greening in Arabidopsis seedlings. The CIPK14-impairment mutant cipk14 grown in continuous far-red (FR) light did not show greening when exposed to white light illumination for 15 h. By contrast, the FR-grown phytochrome A null mutant phyA greened within 0.5 h of exposure to white light. Although greening of Col-4 (wild-type) was not completely abolished by FR, it exhibited a significantly decreased greening capacity compared with that of phyA. Further analyses demonstrated that the expression of protochlorophyllide reductase (POR) genes was correlated with the greening ability of the genotypes. In addition, CIPK14 appeared to be regulated by both the circadian clock and PhyA. Taken together, these results suggest that CIPK14 plays a role in PhyA-mediated FR inhibition of seedling greening, and that a Ca-related kinase may be involved in a previously undefined branch point in the phytochrome A signaling pathway.