A helping hand: signal transduction in plant immunity

植物病害是对粮食生产的持续威胁，也是实现全球粮食安全的主要制约因素。限制植物病害的一种方法是了解植物免疫受体如何识别病原体的存在并转导导致抗病的信号。几十年来，育种家们一直利用这些植物免疫受体来帮助培育健康的作物。本项目将研究水稻细胞内植物免疫受体（NLRs）如何共同作用以促进免疫。先前的工作已经显示了这些蛋白质如何识别病原体感染特征的分子基础，但我们对这种识别如何转导成信号知之甚少。该项目将研究免疫受体在病原体识别过程中发生的变化，包括潜在的构象变化和寡聚化的变化。它还将研究构象变化促进与导致信号传导的其他细胞成分相互作用的假设。这些结果将通过诱变来确定它们对功能的影响。

Plant diseases are a continuous threat to food production and a major constraint on achieving global food security. One approach to restricting plant diseases is to understand how plant immune receptors recognise the presence of pathogens and transduce signals that lead to disease resistance. It is these plant immune receptors that breeders have used for decades to help deliver healthy crops. This project will address how intracellular plant immune receptors (NLRs) from rice function together to promote immunity. Previous work has shown the molecular basis of how these proteins recognise the signatures of pathogen infection, but we understand very little about how this recognition is transduced into a signal. This project will investigate the changes that occur within immune receptors on pathogen recognition, including the potential for conformational change and changes in oligomerisation. It will also investigate the hypothesis that conformational change promotes interactions with other cellular components leading to signalling. Each of these outcomes will be probed by mutagenesis to define their impact on function.