To survive in the variable conditions of the outside environment, plants constantly need to adapt their growth and reproduction strategies. Due to climate change, plants and commercial crops will be more and more exposed to extreme weather variations, so it is very important to understand how they sense and manage different stress conditions such as flooding, drought, heat and high salinity.
Mitochondria are one of the key cellular organelles that mediate energy conversion and are thus tightly linked with the overall survival of an organism. In our lab, we are studying a molecular signalling pathway that allows communication between the mitochondria and nucleus, so-called mitochondrial ‘retrograde’ signalling. Mitochondrial ‘retrograde’ signalling is triggered by reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by the mitochondria during stress, leading to activation of a transcription factor that is anchored in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane. The goal of the project is to identify the mechanism by which the ER-bound transcription factor is cleaved by proteases, to allow relocation to the nucleus and switching on gene expression. Furthermore, we are exploring how mitochondrial signalling actively slows down plant growth to potentially increase survival. The project will involve confocal microscopy, gene expression, proteolytic and phenotypic analysis. We are also studying the evolutionary origin of mitochondrial signalling in plants, using representatives of early plant lineages such as mosses. If you are interested, please contact olivier.van_aken@biol.lu.se!
