Project description
Abiotic stress effects on cell wall integrity and subsequent adaptive responses
The plant cell wall is the primary barrier against environmental stress and a target of interventions to increase crop resilience in the face of climate change. The so-called cell wall integrity (CWI) maintenance mechanism senses damage to the cell wall and initiates repair mechanisms. Impairment of the CWI mechanism triggers adaptive responses, including the production of phytohormones such as abscisic acid (ABA), a key regulator of plant adaptive responses to abiotic stresses. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the WallABAutStiffness project aims to investigate the mechanisms of interaction between the CWI maintenance mechanism, ABA production and cell wall viscoelasticity to inform crop protection strategies.
Objective
Recent severe heatwaves and prolonged drought negatively affect agricultural crop fitness and biomass, threatening global food security. Therefore, there is an urgent need to enhance crop resilience against environmental stress to reduce crop loss. The cell wall is of key interest here due to its role as the primary barrier against environmental stress. However, improving crop tolerance via cell wall manipulation remains challenging due to plasticity, which determines the wall's ability to alter its shape, composition, and viscoelasticity (stiffness and viscosity). Plasticity seems to be modulated by the cell wall integrity (CWI) maintenance mechanism. A mechanism that continuously monitors the functional integrity of cell walls by utilizing a wide range of CWI sensors to sense damages in the cell wall and initiate wall remodeling. Any impairment in the CWI triggers adaptive responses, including the production of phytohormones. Abscisic acid (ABA) is one of the key phytohormones that regulate plant adaptive responses against abiotic stresses. Although the potential of the CWI maintenance mechanism modulating cell wall plasticity via ABA signaling has been proposed, the underlying mechanism remains largely unexplored. Therefore, investigating interactions between these processes may lead to the development of novel strategies to improve plant tolerance against abiotic stress. In this project, I will investigate the relationship between changes in ABA and cell wall viscoelasticity controlled by the CWI maintenance mechanism. I will also identify and characterize novel components of the CWI maintenance mechanism responsible for the induction of ABA production. Furthermore, the knowledge produced here will facilitate the identification of corresponding orthologs in commercial crops that can be used to develop strategies to improve crop performance.
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.
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutrition
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculture
- agricultural sciencesagricultural biotechnologybiomass
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
7491 Trondheim
Norway