Project description
How plants sense and respond to temperature
Recent research has discovered that proteins containing prion domains (PrD) can function as thermosensors for plants by undergoing temperature-dependent phase change. It also found that a number of transcriptional regulators, which are essential for the induction of protective heat stress responses, are also controlled by PrD and undergo phase change. The EU-funded TROPIC project will determine how variation in the PrD may 'tune' the temperature response so plants can adapt their heat stress transcriptome to respond at a threshold appropriate for their climate. The research fellow will determine the temperature-response set points of these regulators in vitro, isolating PrDs from plants that grow under very different temperature regimes and relate the behaviour of the PrD to their biological response to temperature.
Objective
Temperature is a key environmental variable influencing plant distribution. Plants have colonised most habitats, from the tropics to the arctic circle. How plants are able to adapt to climate is of fundamental interest and of particular relevance during a period of rapid climate change, where plants have already been seen to change their phenology and range. Despite much interest in this area, understanding has been limited by our lack of knowledge of the mechanisms underlying temperature perception in plants. Recently, the host lab for this proposal has shown that proteins containing prion-domains (PrD) are able to function as thermosensors by undergoing temperature dependent phase-change. In unpublished work, the group has found that Heat Shock Factors (HSFs), which are essential for the induction of the protective heat shock proteins, are also controlled by PrDs and undergo phase change. These molecular sensing mechanisms by HSFs provide a unique opportunity to investigate how variation in the PrDs may “tune” the temperature response such that plants may adapt their HSFs to have a response at a threshold appropriate for their climate. E.g. rice grows robustly under temperature conditions that represent a lethal heatshock for Arabidopsis. In this proposal, I shall combine my expertise in studying rice environmental sensing from my PhD studies with recent developments in the Wigge laboratory in studying phase change of the HSFs in response to heat. I will use a comparative biology approach to determine the temperature response set-points of HSFs in vitro from a range of plants that grow under very different temperature regimes, and relate the behaviour of the PrD domains of the HSFs to the biological response of the plants to temperature. Finally, I will directly test my hypothesis by making directed changes to the thermosensory PrDs to increase and decrease thermal responsiveness, and assay these new thermosensors directly in plants and in a yeast system.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculture
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
14979 Grossbeeren
Germany