Transduction of mechanical cellular oscillation by the plasma-membrane mechanosensitive channel MSL10

Throughout their life, plants are submitted to recurrent cyclic mechanical loading due to wind. The resulting passive oscillation movements of stem and foliage is an important phenomenon for biological and ecological issues such as photosynthesis optimization 1-3 and thermal exchange 4. The induced motions at plant scale are well described and analyzed, with oscillations at typically 1 to 3 Hz in trees 5-10. However, the cellular perception and transduction of such recurring mechanical signals remains an open question. Multimeric protein complexes forming mechanosensitive (MS) channels embedded in the membrane provide an efficient system to rapidly convert mechanical tension into electrical signal 11. Here we show that the plasma membrane mechanosensitive channel MscS-LIKE 10 (MSL10) from the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana responds to pulsed membrane stretching with rapid activation and relaxation kinetics in the range of one second. Under sinusoidal membrane stretching MSL10 presents a greater activity than under static stimulation and behaves as a large bandpass oscillation \"follower\" without filtering the signal in the range of 0.3 to 3 Hz. With a localization in aerial organs naturally submitted to oscillations, our results suggest that the mechanosensitive channel MSL10 represents a molecular component of a universal system of oscillatory perception in plants.