Interaction Network Construction and Functional Analysis of the Plasma Membrane H-ATPase in (Rhodophyta).

Salinity is a serious threat to most land plants. Although seaweeds adapt to salty environments, intertidal species experience wide fluctuations in external salinities, including hyper- and hypo-saline stress. is an economic intertidal seaweed with a strong tolerance to hypo-salinity. Until now, the salt stress tolerance mechanism has remained elusive. Our previous study showed that the expression of plasma membrane H-ATPase () genes were the most upregulated under hypo-salinity. In this study, we obtained the complete sequence of , traced the relative expression of this gene in under hypo-salinity, and analyzed the protein structure and properties based on the gene's sequence. The result showed that the expression of in increased significantly with varying hypo-salinity treatments, and the higher the degree of low salinity stress, the higher the expression level. This BfPMHA had typical PMHA structures with a Cation-N domain, an E1-E2 ATPase domain, a Hydrolase domain, and seven transmembrane domains. In addition, through the membrane system yeast two-hybrid library, three candidate proteins interacting with BfPMHA during hypo-saline stress were screened, fructose-bisphosphate aldolase (BfFBA), glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (NADP) (phosphorylating) (BfGAPDH), and manganese superoxide dismutase (BfMnSOD). The three candidates and genes were successfully transferred and overexpressed in a BY4741 yeast strain. All of them significantly enhanced the yeast tolerance to NaCl stress, verifying the function of BfPMHA in salt stress response. This is the first study to report the structure and topological features of PMHA in and its candidate interaction proteins in response to salt stress.