Escrt-Dependent Trafficking Mechanisms in Plants

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INTELLECTUAL MERITThis projects aims to understand how plant endosomal proteins control the trafficking and degradation of plasma membrane proteins, including receptors, channels, and certain cell wall biosynthetic enzymes. The ESCRTs (Endosomal Sorting Complex Required for Transport) are multimeric protein complexes that specifically recognize and sort those plasma membrane proteins that need to be transported to the vacuole for degradation. The completion of these studies will clarify the functional aspects of the plant endosome system. There is strong evidence suggesting that the organization and function of the plant endosomal system is different from their counterparts in yeast or animals. In fact, plants have endosomal components with no orthologs in other organisms. This project will also analyze the roles of endosomal trafficking in various aspects of plant life, such as development, cell type specification, cell wall remodeling, signal transduction, and hormone transport. BROADER IMPACTSThe project will have impact on education and outreach. The PI is currently teaching two undergraduate and two graduate courses in the University of Wisconsin. One graduate student from an under-represented group in science is already working on this project. The application of state-of-the-art imaging techniques will be also important for education, since the PI is committed to develop workshops on cell biology and cell imaging for undergraduate and graduate students across campus as part of the educational activities of the Plant Imaging Center in the Department of Botany-University of Wisconsin, which was initially supported by NSF funds. In addition, the PI's group provides confocal and electron tomography images obtained in this study for display at the microscope and imaging discovery niche in the Town Center of the new Wisconsin Institute of Discovery on campus.