SCHENGEN-ROOT · 'Filling the gaps' in the Schengen pathway for plant root Casparian strip integrity
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-09-01 → 2022-08-31
- EU contribution
- €203,149
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
'Filling the gaps' in the Schengen pathway for plant root Casparian strip integrity
The funded project addresses a fundamental question with broad impact: How does a cell ensures specific outputs upon perceiving diverse inputs? The ability to respond to external stimuli is a fundamental characteristic of all living organisms.The execution of a myriad of cellular functions thus relies on these pathways to maintain specificity from signal input to cellular output. However, i diverse signalling pathways often share similar or identical intermediate components. This typifies the “hourglass conundrum”, where a multitude of inputs each need to elicit a distinct output via a limited common intermediates. Plants have a de-centralized organization. To adapt to the changing environment, each plant cell must be able to incorporate signals to determine the outputs of growth, development, and immunity. Therefore, plants should have a more pronounced hourglass problem, making them great organisms to understand the mechanisms whereby undesirable crosstalk is avoided and signalling specificity maintained. The overall objective of the SCHENGEN-ROOT project aims to understand how two distinct receptor/ligand signalling pathways maintain output specificity in a single cell type. Using advanced genetic and cell biology approaches, this project dissects signalling specificity with single cell resolution, revealing how common signalling modules can regulate a variety of outputs.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Plants have developed sophisticated barriers in various tissues and organs to safeguard integrity. To monitor barrier integrity, plants appear to have evolved similar systems that share signalling modules. The receptor/ligand signalling pathway initiated by SGN3/CIFs establishes the integrity of the Casparian strip (CS), a root diffusion barrier that is essential for controlling nutrient and water homeostasis. The CS starts off as aligned microdomains that eventually fuse to forge a continuous barrier. The SGN pathway is crucial to “find and seal gaps” between the microdomains. However, the mechanism that ensures perfect domain fusion is not well understood.Here, I aim to uncover missing mechanistic details and characterise central unknown elements in a proposed, branched SGN pathway. I intend to identify potential SGN3 co-receptors and additional membrane transducers, and to investigate the elusive role of MAPKs during CS formation. The findings will be crucial to resolve pathway features that the current linear model cannot explain. First, identifying co-receptors is necessary to understand how SGN3 is activated. SGN3 also appears to be involved in embryonic cuticle and pollen coat formation. Therefore, co-receptor identification would clarify whether SGN3 perceives the same or different ligand to govern distinct barrier formation processes. Secondly, identifying additional transducers will provide a molecular basis for understanding two potentially distinct lignification processes regulated by SGN3. This will provide broad insights into how receptors regulate specific sub-functions. Thirdly, MAPK cascades are activated downstream of many receptor/ligand pathways. Elucidating their function in the SGN pathway will give insights into diverse biological processes. Overall, this project will provide a key model to study specificity and localisation of signalling modules, leading towards tissue-specific and inducible barrier engineering in plants.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITE DE LAUSANNE · LAUSANNECoordinatorSwitzerland
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union