Genomics meets Cell Biology: A Chemical and Proteomic Approach to Dissect Endosome Sorting Networks In Vivo
Final Report Abstract
Plants in their natural environment are continually subject to many different environmental perturbations, including changes in light, nutrients, pathogen load and temperature among others. Therefore, to be competitive in the field, plants must sense and integrate information about many environmental factors such that the response of the organism is appropriate for that particular set of conditions. The cyclophilin mutant, cyp71, shows a very pleiotropic phenotype and therefore is an interesting tool for the study of signal integration in plants. I have shown that cyp71 is disturbed in hormone signalling, transcript regulation, sugar signalling and development. Through a biochemical approach, I have also linked CYP71 to the MOS4-Associated Complex (MAC), which is known to be an important player in pathogen defence. Therefore, CYP71-MAC is a putative regulatory node, which could orchestrate the cross talk of many signalling pathways in plants. Studying this mutant will give me a better understanding how plants are able to integrate different signals to survive in a changing environment.
