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PhD Proposal Seminar – Eduardo Ramirez Rodriguez (McFarlane Lab)
May 19, 2021 @ 1:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Decoding the signals that shape plant cell walls
Abstract
The plant cell wall is a polysaccharide-based extracellular matrix that surrounds and protects plant cells. As highly dynamic structures, the cell walls balance between rigidity for protection and structure, and flexibility to grow and respond to environmental cues. These properties make it an ideal source for renewable materials and bioenergy. However, attempts to overhaul the plant’s finely tuned polysaccharide deposition ability by increasing the expression of polysaccharide biosynthetic enzymes in plants have had limited success. These results hint at the existence of an underlying regulatory mechanism, called ‘cell wall integrity’ (CWI) signaling that perceives changes outside the cell, and in turn, remodels the cell wall and/or regulates plant growth. To date, several cell membrane-bound kinases have been implicated as the signal perception component of CWI, yet the downstream players remain undefined. We employed a proteomics approach by treating plants to induce cell wall stress and analyzing phosphorylated peptides through high resolution mass spectrometry. Altogether, our data from 3 independent experiments (n=9) shows 242 differentially phosphorylated phosphopeptides, corresponding to 241 proteins. We conducted bioinformatic analysis of all 241 candidates integrating gene ontology terms, protein-protein interaction networks, phosphomotif analysis, and comparative analysis with other stress-induced phosphoproteomes. These results guided selection of 30 candidates for a reverse genetics screen under cell wall stress conditions. Results from this screen implicate several intracellular kinase candidates in CWI. I propose to characterize several of these candidates within the context of CWI, using a combination of biochemistry, genetics, live cell imaging and proteomics.
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Join Zoom Meeting
https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/84659195735
Meeting ID: 846 5919 5735
Host: Heather McFarlane (h.mcfarlane@utoronto.ca)
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