Selective protein degradation: a rheostat to modulate cell-cycle phase transitions

Plant growth control has become a major focus due to economic reasons and results from a balance of cell proliferation in meristems and cell elongation that occurs during differentiation. Research on plant cell proliferation over the last two decades has revealed that the basic cell-cycle machinery is conserved between human and plants, although specificities exist. While many regulatory circuits control each step of the cell cycle, the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) appears in fungi and metazoans as a major player. In particular, the UPS promotes irreversible proteolysis of a set of regulatory proteins absolutely required for cell-cycle phase transitions. Not unexpectedly, work over the last decade has brought the UPS to the forefront of plant cell-cycle research. In this review, we will summarize our knowledge of the function of the UPS in the mitotic cycle and in endoreduplication, and also in meiosis in higher plants.