Defining the inter-organellar redox communication in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (FWOTM963)

To survive various environmental stress conditions, plants rely on signal transduction events, and one type of signals are reduction- oxidation (redox) signals. How these redox signals are perceived, triggered and transduced is still not fully understood. To define redox communication, we will use the green microalgae model system Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Firstly, we follow how the levels of the redox metabolite H2O2 changes in organellar cross-talk experiments. As a rapid first redox response, H2O2 reacts with cysteine thiols on proteins, forming sulfenylated cysteines, with protein conformational changes as a consequence. Secondly, we trap and identify these cysteine-modified proteins in the organelles where we observe an increase of H2O2. Thirdly, we study the oxidation kinetics and the induced structural changes on one of the redox-sensing proteins from a curated list of organellar proteins. With this approach, we will obtain a new perspective on organellar H2O2 communication in photosynthetic cells and on the pathways that might be engineered to help surviving environmental variations.

Keywords:redox signaling, organellar communication

Disciplines:Cell signalling, Plant biochemistry, Plant cell and molecular biology, Posttranslational modifications