The role of Rho GTPases in plant immunity

该项目利用与哺乳动物细胞生物学的相似之处来更好地了解植物免疫。发现植物对微生物病原体的反应是至关重要的，因为全世界90%的卡路里摄入量直接来自农作物。在感染期间，植物细胞将其免疫防御定位到感染部位，目的是排斥入侵者。在我们最近的论文（https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.05.014）中，我们证明了蛋白质form4将植物细胞骨架与这种免疫反应联系起来。这就提出了几个问题，例如：植物细胞如何将微生物接触的地点“标记”为一个特殊的位置，以运送form4之类的货物？具体涉及哪些分子？我们能否利用哺乳动物和酵母FORMINs的范例来帮助解决这些问题，这是否会给我们对真核生物整体进化的新的基本见解？本项目将通过探索Rho GTPases在植物免疫中的作用来解决这些问题。该蛋白家族的成员在动物和酵母中招募并激活FORMINs。在植物中，Rho gtpase在细胞生长和发育中起着复杂的作用，但它们与植物FORMINs的关系是神秘的。学生将结合先进的活细胞光显微镜与分子生物学和植物病理学。此外，他们将学习从图像中量化数据和使用数学建模来设计实验所需的多学科技能。管理团队和他们的研究团队致力于将生物科学研究实验室典型的“传统”湿实验室方法与生物信息学和数学模型指导下的假设检验相结合。该项目由布里斯托尔大学的Harry Mellor教授共同监督，他是哺乳动物FORMINs， Rho GTPases和极化分泌方面的专家。

This project utilises parallels with mammalian cell biology to better understand plant immunity. Discovering how plants respond to microbial pathogens is of vital importance as 90% of all calorie intake worldwide comes directly from crop plants. During infection, plant cells locate their immune defences to the site of infection with the aim of repelling the invader. In our recent paper (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.05.014) we demonstrated that the protein FORMIN4 links the plant cytoskeleton to this immune response. This raises several questions such as: How does the plant cell 'flag' the site of microbial contact as being a special location to deliver cargo like FORMIN4? What are the specific molecules involved? Can we use paradigms from mammal and yeast FORMINs to help solve these questions and will this give us new fundamental insights into the evolution of eukaryotes as a whole?This project will address these questions by exploring the role of Rho GTPases in plant immunity. Members of this protein family in animals and yeast recruit and activate FORMINs. In plants, Rho GTPases play complex roles in cell growth and development but their relationship to plant FORMINs is mysterious. The student will combine advanced live-cell light microscopy with molecular biology and plant pathology. Furthermore they will learn the multidisciplinary skills needed to quantify data from images and use mathematical modelling to design experiments. The supervisory team and their research teams are dedicated to integrating 'traditional' wet-lab approaches typical of bioscience research laboratories with hypothesis testing guided by bioinformatics and mathematical modelling. This project is co-supervised by Prof. Harry Mellor at the University of Bristol who is an expert in mammalian FORMINs, Rho GTPases and polarised secretion.