Abstract
Plant stomatin/prohibitin/flotillin/HflK/C (SPFH) proteins are represented by prohibitins, flotillins, stomatins, erlins, and hypersensitive induced reaction proteins (HIRs). The purpose of this review is to summarize the current state of knowledge regarding plant flotillins and HIRs and to assign putative functions of plant flotillins and erlins based on the known functions of their mammalian homologs.
Similar to human flotillins, plant flotillins are localized in membrane microdomains, and involved in endocytosis, and interact with receptor kinases. HIRs play an important role in plant immunity by promoting the hypersensitive response and binding to leucine-rich repeat proteins.
In this way, they participate in resistance to bacterial or fungal pathogens. We further focused on flotillins, HIRs, and erlins in Arabidopsis thaliana and, using public databases, described them in terms of the following: 1) their transcription throughout plant ontogeny and under various environmental conditions; 2) the presence of conserved domains or characteristic motifs in their amino acid sequences; and 3) their potential interactions with other proteins.
Based on these data, we hypothesize about their additional functions and properties.