Periodic Reporting for period 1 - INSPirAUTOR (Understanding how Inositol Polyphosphates regulate autophagy and lipid body formation in photosynthetic organisms: crosstalk with TOR signaling.)
Berichtszeitraum: 2018-03-01 bis 2020-02-29
1. Determine the relationship between TOR kinase, InsPs, autophagy and lipid storage using TOR inhibitors. We worked on the dissection of the TOR/InsPs regulatory network using analytical approaches (mainly InsPs and lipids determination). Additionally, we analyzed the connection between TOR signaling and P metabolism in Chlamydomonas Part of these results was included in a publication of the host lab in The Plant Cell (Couso et al. 2020).
2. Proteomic analysis of InsPs-deficient mutant to identify C metabolism/partitioning networks. In this study, we found several well-known TOR targets to be differentially regulated in the mutant. This indicates a possible interaction between these two signaling pathways that share common targets. Overall, these data are very relevant for the field of photosynthetic organisms because we found a new level of regulation that has never been reported.
3. Determine InsPs and TOR interaction under nutritional stress. N and P starvation were used to monitored autophagy activation in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and these results were used to validate the TOR activity read out in this alga and to investigate a new mutant lst8-1 that is defective in one of the core proteins of the TOR complex 1. These results helped us to elucidate the mechanism by which TOR is involved in the regulation of P limitation and are part of one publication of the host lab in The Plant Cell (Couso et al., 2020).
In order to communicate the results obtained during this action, we have participated in three different international conferences, one as a poster presentation (EMBO conference on” TOR signaling in photosynthetic organisms” in France), one invited talk in “The 18th International Conference on the Cell and Molecular Biology of Chlamydomonas” in USA) and an oral communication (“Autophagy Virtual Days” virtual conference organized in Austria). After completing this project, we have submitted a paper that includes the results obtained after analyzing proteomics and TOR activity in a InsPs deficient mutant called “Inositol pyrophosphates and TOR signaling coordinate a new level of complexity in the regulation of the phosphoproteome in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii” that is currently under evaluation. We also participated in an article in the journal “The Plant Cell” (https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00179) that got a special mention of a science editor in the same journal (https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.19.00888). Additionally, we have participated in different outreach activities in three different events: oral communications at the European Researchers´ night in 2018 and 2020 and one at the International Day of Women in Science in 2020.