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，以更好地了解植物免疫。发现植物如何应对微生物病原体至关重要，因为全球90%的卡路里摄入量直接来自农作物。在感染过程中，植物细胞将其免疫防御定位于感染部位，目的是击退入侵者。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FORMIN4将植物细胞骨架与这种免疫反应联系起来。这提出了几个问题，如：植物细胞如何“标记”微生物接触的网站作为一个特殊的位置，以提供货物，如FORMIN 4？具体涉及哪些分子？我们能否利用哺乳动物和酵母FORMIN的范例来帮助解决这些问题，这是否会给我们提供关于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。动物和酵母中的这种蛋白质家族的成员招募并激活FORMIN。在植物中，Rho GTP酶在细胞生长和发育中发挥着复杂的作用，但它们与植物FORMINs的关系是神秘的。学生将结合联合收割机先进的活细胞光学显微镜与分子生物学和植物病理学。此外，他们将学习量化图像数据所需的多学科技能，并使用数学建模来设计实验。监督团队及其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建模指导的假设检验相结合。该项目由布里斯托大学的Harry梅洛尔教授共同监督，他是哺乳动物FORMINs，Rho GTP酶和极化分泌的专家。

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.