Members of the Arabidopsis 14-3-3 gene family trans-complement two types of defects in fission yeast.

14-3-3 proteins are highly conserved among eukaryotes and perform diverse biochemical activities. We isolated five types of Arabidopsis 14-3-3 cDNAs in a screen for clones that could block ectopic meiosis driven by the pat1 mutation in fission yeast. Overexpression of fission yeast rad24, which encodes a 14-3-3 protein, also suppressed pat1. All Arabidopsis clones isolated could rescue the deformed morphology and elevated UV sensitivity of the rad24 mutant. Thus, it appears that Arabidopsis 14-3-3 proteins can generally substitute for their fission yeast counterpart in function. Expression of an Arabidopsis 14-3-3 clone, GF14µ, was shown to be rather ubiquitous among plant organs.