13 ERA-CAPS The role of the N-end rule pathway in controlling plant response to the environment

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Manipulation of plants to provide stability of yield under unpredictable growth conditions will beessential to respond to the effect of climate change in increasing the uncertainty of the agriculturalenvironment. Selective and conditional removal of regulator proteins by proteolysis is emerging as amajor regulatory principle in plants. The aim of the N-vironment project is to provide a completemechanistic understanding of the role of the N-end rule pathway of targeted proteolysis incontrolling plant responses to the environment. To achieve this goal consortium partners have beenselected that represent internationally leading European teams with experience in the pathwaysmultiple facets, including the biochemical basis of the pathway, hypoxia and plant development,transcriptional regulation of stress and metabolic signalling. The project will bring together sixresearch groups with complementary expertise in fundamental molecular plant science,biochemistry and chemistry, in four institutions. The research programme of the N-vironmentconsortium will be achieved through six inter-related Work Packages carried out by the fourconsortium partners (three funded by ERA-CAPS, one associated laboratory). The objectives of thesework packages are related to three fundamental questions that arose after integration of the recentdiscoveries by consortium members of the role of the N-end rule pathway of targeted proteolysis as amajor regulator of plant development and response to the environment. Question 1: What are theprotein substrates and enzymatic components of the N-end rule pathway? Question 2: How is the Nendrule pathway integrated into cellular signaling pathways? Question 3: What is the extent of therole of the N-end rule pathway in plant response to the biotic and abiotic environment? The proposedresearch has highly innovative measurable outcomes that address this newly discovered area of plantbiology, and will uncover: New mechanisms regulating protein stability, new mechanisms ofenvironmental stress sensing, new functions for proteins in stress sensing, the importance of theN-end rule in a key EU crop, tomato. This fast-developing area of plant molecular science is led byN-vironment members (including discovery of substrates, methods of entry into the N-end rulepathway, biochemical components of the pathway), and together with the availability of a largenumber of unique resources within the consortium, makes the N-vironment proposal highly novel andtimely. The synergistic value of this collaborative programme will be the development andexploitation of a highly novel area of plant biology of key importance to agriculture, in which Europehas the capacity to take a world lead through ERA-CAPS funding.