Arabidopsis hypocotyl growth in darkness requires the phosphorylation of a microtubule-associated protein

Rapid hypocotyl elongation allows buried seedlings to emerge, where light triggers de-etiolation and inhibits hypocotyl growth mainly by photoreceptors. Phosphorylation/dephosphorylation events regulate many aspects of plant development. Only recently we have begun to uncover the earliest phospho-signaling responders to light. Here, we reported a large-scale phosphoproteomic analysis and identified 20 proteins that changed their phosphorylation pattern following a 20 min light pulse compared to darkness. Microtubule-associated proteins were highly overrepresented in this group. Among them, we studied CIP7 (COP1-INTERACTING-PROTEIN 7), which presented microtubule (MT) localization in contrast to the previous description. An isoform of CIP7 phosphorylated at Serine⁹¹⁵ was detected in etiolated seedlings but was undetectable after a light pulse in the presence of photoreceptors, while CIP7 transcript expression decays with long light exposure. The short hypocotyl phenotype and rearrangement of MTs in etiolated cip7 mutants are complemented by CIP7-YFP and the phospho-mimetic CIP7^S915D-YFP, but not the phospho-null CIP7^S915A-YFP suggesting that the phosphorylated S⁹¹⁵CIP7 isoform promotes hypocotyl elongation through MT reorganization in darkness. Our evidence on Serine⁹¹⁵ of CIP7 unveils phospho-regulation of MT-based processes during skotomorphogenic hypocotyl growth.