PhD Proposal Seminar – Aparna Haldar (Mott Lab)

Investigating immune functions of unknown LRR-RLKs in Arabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

To receive environmental stimuli, plants rely on the activities of numerous cell surface receptors. The largest group of cell surface receptors is the approximately 225 leucine rich repeat receptor-like kinases (LRR-RLKs) present within the genome of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. These receptors have been shown to have important roles in both plant growth and immunity, but most are not well characterized.

The goal of my research is to assign biological functions to orphan LRR-RLKs and examine the diversity and evolution of these receptors across the diversity of plants. Network analysis was used to predict biological functions for LRR-RLKs by constructing biologically relevant spatial and temporal protein-protein interaction networks. These networks show the unique interactions observed in plant tissues relevant to pathogen infection and induced upon pathogen challenge. Based on these networks two candidate genes were chosen for further study, SRF-9 and MUL. To better understand the evolutionary context in which these receptors emerged, LRR-RLKs were divided into smaller sub-families to examine expansion and contraction patterns. Preliminary results have indicated that expansion is observed in sub-family I of the LRR-RLKs specifically within the Brassicaceae family.

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Join Zoom Meeting

https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/81206557657

Meeting ID: 812 0655 7657

Host: Adam Mott (adam.mott@utoronto.ca)

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