{
  "id": 10726941,
  "title": "A family of metabolite damage-control phosphatases modulates ROS-induced autophagy and plant stress resilience",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/29/a-family-of-metabolite-damage-control-phosphatases-modulates-ros",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-29T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.29.755255v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Researchers have discovered that a group of metabolite damage-control phosphatases, known as Reactive Metabolite Damage-Control Phosphatases (RMDPs), play a crucial role in modulating autophagy and plant stress resilience. These RMDPs, which act as metabolite-repair phosphatases, clear reactive products and are essential for clearing reactive oxygen species (ROS) induced by ROS. The study identified these proteins through an in vivo photoaffinity proteomics approach in Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings. The researchers dubbed the new autophagy modulator RMDP inhibitor-1 (RMDPi-1) due to its inhibitory effect on AtRMDP1 activity in vitro. Crystal structures of AtRMDP1 revealed a flexible region near the binding pocket that was absent in previous models. Treatment with RMDPi-1 or knockout of the phosphatase gene increased autophagic flux in Arabidopsis and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, demonstrating a conserved effect. The increased autophagy was linked to a spike in ROS levels. Molecular docking predicted two possible binding modes consistent with the observed electron density. Targeted and untargeted metabolomic experiments showed that both pharmacological and genetic suppression of RMDP led to an accumulation of glycating agents and phosphate sugars, which were associated with the ROS stress that induced alternate ROS-scavenging mechanisms and autophagy. Overall, the study highlights the importance of RMDPs in plant stress tolerance through their conserved metabolite damage-control functions.",
  "summary": "Autophagy is an intracellular recycling pathway with profound impacts on development, growth, and stress tolerance in eukaryotes. Therefore, unravelling signalling mechanisms that modulate the process has broad applicability. Here, we characterised a small organic molecule as an enhancer of autophagy across diverse plant lineages. Through an in vivo photoaffinity proteomics approach in…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}