Date: 9th October 2024
Time: 15:15
Title: Eversive evolution: exploring and rewiring oxygen sensing mechanism
Location: Seminar room K1088, Viikki Info Centre, Viikinkaari 11
Host: Ari-Pekka Mähönen
Abstract: Being aerobic organisms, plants require oxygen for their metabolism. Environmental conditions that restrict oxygen availability, such as flooding, jeopardise plant survival and limit crop productivity. Flowering plants sense molecular oxygen availability through a proteolytic system that act on protein N-termini to impact the abundance and activity of several transcriptional regulator. Among the substrates of this signalling pathway. The group VII Ethylene Response Factor (ERFVII) transcription factors play a major role in low oxygen adaptation. When and how this response to hypoxia evolved in land plants has remained unknown. We combined transcriptome surveys, genome sequence analyses and cross-taxa complementation to investigate the conservation and divergence of gene regulation in response to hypoxia in major land plant clades. In parallel, we aimed to rewrite evolution and rewire a mammalian-type oxygen sensing system in plant cells to generate orthogonal control of plant metabolism and development, to improve chances of survival in case of flooding.
Aerobic biology has driven the development and diversification of life forms on our planet over the last two billion years. We investigate the signalling mechanisms that link oxygen availability to plant growth and development, to understand adaptations to oxygen fluctuations throughout evolution and to design novel biotechnological strategies.