The role of biomolecular condensates in regulating plant responses to light and temperature.
Supervisors:
Eirini Kaiserli, School of Molecular Biosciences, University of Glasgow
Ralf Bauer, University of Strathclyde
Summary:
Plants are highly plastic and provide an ideal system to study how environmental stimuli control their morphology and growth. The aim of this project is to understand how plants respond and adapt to light and warm temperature signals. The alarming rise in global temperatures are predicted to lead to huge crop losses (up to 10% per 1 degree C increase). Therefore, there is an urgent need to discover and characterise the key molecular components integrating light and thermotolerance responses in plants.
The student will acquire training in genetics, quantitative phenotyping, molecular biology, super-resolution imaging and proteomics to characterise the function and dynamics of sub-nuclear protein complexes in regulating gene expression and adaptation in plants. In particular, this project aims to uncover how elevated temperature controls the dynamic association and function of nuclear-localised proteins that integrate light and temperature signals via association with RNA and chromatin in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The role of liquid-liquid phase separation in modulating the temperature and light-regulated formation of the afore-mentioned subnuclear macromolecular complexes will be investigated using advanced imaging and proteomic approaches. Understanding the mechanisms of environmental signal integration will allow us to implement these findings in precision agricultural practices on economically important species to minimise crop loss and enhance food production in response to climate change.