Collaborative: RoL: Molecular patterns for redox sensing and signaling in organismic defense

The bacterial diseases of plants lead to substantial crop damage and significant economic losses each year. Plants activate defense responses locally (i.e., at the infection site) and systemically when confronted with pathogenic bacterial infections. The goal of this project is to better understand these plant defense response pathways and to better understand how plants defend against bacterial infections in general. This project will be used to provide research experiences to students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities in MS, NC, and GA. These partnerships' critical goal will be to generate sustainable long-term collaborations with faculty, train undergraduate students in STEM research, and build a pipeline of underserved students for related career tracks. Online symposia, video lectures and practical workshops will be organized on project-related themes including plant synthetic biology.

Knowledge of the molecular logic and organization of redox signaling networks is necessary to enhance our understanding of the adaptive system that governs responses to environmental challenges in eukaryotes. A multi-disciplinary team with complementary expertise will engage in innovative experimental and computational approaches to elucidate redox modulated signaling pathways that underpin synchronous and pulsatile gene activity in plant systemic immunity. The project consists of three components. First, high-throughput transcription profiling will identify recurrent spatial and temporal patterns in the plant immune transcriptome. Second, advanced redox proteomics will identify oxidative modifications of protein cysteines with a focus on regulatory thiols. Finally, a theoretical and modeling framework will be generated to conceptualize and analyze the significance of signal periodicity in plant systemic immunity. Successful implementation of the project will impact our understanding of redox processes in information encoding in biological systems and generate methods and algorithms widely applicable to study redox modifications of proteins and oscillatory dynamics of biological systems.

This project is co-funded by the Systems and Synthetic Biology cluster in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences and the Plant-Biotic Interactions Program in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.