Projects

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Unravelling uranium uptake mechanisms in Arabidopsis thaliana Hasselt University

Ann CUYPERS
Environmental Biology
Uranium (U) is a radionuclide and heavy metal that naturally occurs, in relatively low concentrations, in soils and in aquatic environments. Due to anthropogenic activities, such as U mining and the phosphate industry, concentrations have locally risen to concentrations that may have an ecological impact. A lot is known about U toxicity in plants, yet little is known about the uptake mechanisms. This information, however, could prove useful to ...

Signal transduction and oxidative stress in Arabidopsis thaliana exposed to toxic concentrations of cadmium and/or copper. Hasselt University

Ann CUYPERS
Environmental Biology
Heavy metals are becoming more and more important as abiotic stress factors for all living organisms because of their use in (agro)industry and consecutively their environmental dispersion. Reduced biomass production is often observed in crops/plants growing on metal-enriched soils. Therefore, a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of metal toxicity is of primary interest. To get a better insight in the underlying cellular and ...

Unravelling the biological role of novel stress-induced peptides (SIPs) in Arabidopsis thaliana. KU Leuven

Bruno Cammue
Centre of Microbial and Plant Genetics

Plant peptides accommodate a broad functional diversity ranging from development, growth, fertilization, senescence, cell death, symbiotic interactions to stress tolerance. They act as key components of cell-to-cell communication, interfere with signaling and response pathways, or display antimicrobial activity. Nevertheless, the total number of peptides is largely underestimated and different types of peptides are underexplored. Most plant ...

Unravelling the molecular function of the Arabidopsis thaliana LSU peptide family in the plant stress response using an interactomics-based approach. KU Leuven

Bruno Cammue
Centre of Microbial and Plant Genetics

Plants defend themselves against pathogens and abiotic stresses using a wide arsenal of defence mechanisms. The model plant Arabidopsis thaliana has four members of the LSU (Low Sulfur Upregulated) gene family (LSU1-4) encoding small proteins with 59-89% sequence similarity and homologues in several other plants and major crops.

Originally, the LSU peptides were characterized as induced during sulfur deficiencies, but ...

Characterization of growth, bacterial population and cadmiumresponsen of ccr mutant Arabidopsis thaliana and the potential of endophytes to increase the biomass and phytoremediation-efficiency Hasselt University

Jaak VANGRONSVELD
Environmental Biology
The competition for cultivating food and biomass crops is a raising problem. This problem can be limited by growing lignocellulosic biomass (eg willow or poplar) on less fertile soils. In an ideal case, the woody plants can be grown on marginal soils (including cadmium (Cd) contaminated soils). An additional advantage is the decontamination of these polluted soils by making use of plants (phytoremediation). During processing the lignocellulose ...

Exploiting mutants to study the control of cell elongation in Arabidopsis thaliana hypocotyls. University of Antwerp

Kris Vissenberg
Integrated Molecular Plant Physiology Research (IMPRES)
This project aims to increase our knowledge on the regulation of plant cell elongation, as it shapes the size and form of plants and plays a key-role in the primary production of biomass. The elongation of the dark-grown Arabidopsis hypocotyl occurs only through cell elongation, making the hypocotyl an ideal model to study (regulation of) cell elongation. One of the prerequisites for thisetiolated growth is the deposition of a thick cell wall ...

Regulation of acute responses in cadmium-exposed Arabidopsis thaliana plants. From signal transduction to acclimation Hasselt University

Ann CUYPERS
Environmental Biology
Cadmium (Cd) is one of the most toxic compounds released into our environment by historical and present-day industrial and agricultural activities. Recent efforts regarding the use of plants to clean-up Cd-contaminated soils are often hampered by its phytotoxicity. Increasing our fundamental knowledge on the mechanisms that underlie toxic responses in Cd-exposed plants is of utmost importance to design or improve phytoremediation strategies. ...

Novel functions for Arabidopsis thaliana plant defensins KU Leuven

Bruno Cammue
Centre of Microbial and Plant Genetics

Plant defensins (PDFs) are small, cysteine-rich peptides that are structurally related to insect and mammalian defensins. They were originally isolated based on their antifungal activity and consequently believed to play a crucial role in the innate immune system of plants. However,accumulating evidence suggests additional in vivo functions for those peptides in general plant development. Surprisingly, however, no clear evidence for any of ...

Study of the initiation and growth of root hairs in Arabidopsis thaliana. University of Antwerp

Kris Vissenberg
Integrated Molecular Plant Physiology Research (IMPRES)
The project aims to study the role of genes in the development of Arabidopsis roothairs. 151 genes were identified, many having a role in cell wall metabolism. The phenotype of knock-out plants will be investigated, as well as cell wall composition, expression patterns, the effect of overexpression on the phenotype and the localisation of the geneproducts of interesting genes. If necessary, interesting lines will be crossed into mutant ...

Genetic determination and molecular control of meiotic CO interference in Arabidopsis thaliana KU Leuven

Nico De Storme
Division of Crop Biotechnics
In plants, like in other sexually reproducing eukaryotes, patterns of genetic variability are determined by the genome-wide distribution of homologous recombination during meiosis. Generally, meiotic cross-overs are non-randomly distributed with most COs occurring in subtelomeric regions whereas other genomic regions remain CO depleted. This specific CO landscape is maintained by a set of overarching regulatory processes with CO interference ...