Plant GRAS and metazoan STATs: one family?

GRAS is a recently discovered family of plant-specific proteins that play important regulatory roles in diverse aspects of plant development. Several of the motifs present in the GRAS proteins suggest that they function as transcription factors, although homology-searching programs have revealed no significant similarity to any non-plant proteins. Here we propose that the GRAS proteins are related to the Signal Transducers and Activators of Transcription (STAT) family of proteins. STATs are known in many non-plant species, and act as intracellular intermediaries between extracellular ligands and the transcription and activation of genes. Our hypothesis is that the GRAS proteins perform this function in plants, with mechanisms similar to those of the animal STATs. If true, this hypothesis has important implications for the evolution of phosphotyrosine based signal transduction systems in eukaryotic organisms. BioEssays 22:573-577, 2000.