Recent Advances in the Role of the Elongator Complex in Plant Physiology and tRNA Modification: A Review

The Elongator complex is a multifunction protein complex which has been shown to be involved in transcriptional elongation, DNA replication and repair, tubulin and histone acetylation, gene silencing and tranfer RNA uridine modification. The composition of the Elongator complex is found to be highly conserved in eukaryotes, protein homologs of various subunits have been identified in fungi, plant, animal, and human. Remarkably, mutation in genes encoding the Elongator complex structural components all results in defects of transfer RNA wobble uridine modification, and this function of the Elongator complex is also conserved in eukaryotes. The Elongator complex mutants in higher plants have pleiotropic phenotypes including defects in vegetative growth, abiscisic acid hypersensitivity, elevated tolerance to drought and oxidative stress. What is the relationship between the Elongator complex's function in nucleoside modification and its activity in other cellular pathways? This review summarizes the recent advances in study of function of the Elongator complex, in the aspects of cell physiology and molecular biology.