Research projects

Overview

RNA granules and plant virus interactions

Cytoplasmic RNA granules like stress granules (SGs) and processing bodies (PBs) are integer part of mRNA homeostasis in eukaryotic organisms. By sequestering, storing and degrading RNAs, RNA granules play a vital role in plant development and stress responses. Virus infection poses extensive stress on transcriptional and translational processes of a cell, thus challenging RNA homeostasis. Despite growing evidence from the animal field, the role of RNA granules during plant virus infection remains largely elusive. 

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The project was started in 2018 with the aim to describe the distinct roles of stress granules and processing bodies during viral infections. Using different plant viruses enables insight into general and specialized targets in the RNA homeostasis pathways. 

 The project is funded by the Swedish research council VR and Carl Tryggers Stiftelse. 

Autophagy and plant virus interactions

Autophagy is a common eukaryotic mechanism that maintains cellular homeostasis during both normal and stress conditions, and acts as the major intracellular degradation pathway beside the ubiquitin-proteasome system. Autophagy (greek for 'self-eating’) mediates the breakdown of damaged cellular content such as organelles but also lipids to facilitate energy production. The autophagy process involves sequestration of cellular content by a membrane structure called the autophagosome, which subsequently enters the lytic vacuole of plants for degradation and subsequent recycling. Unselective autophagy is considered to mainly renew the cytoplasm, whereas selective autophagy is emerging as regulated degradation of selected components such as organelles, aggregates and viruses. Plants with non-functional autophagy collapse when exposed to environmentally challenging conditions such as extreme temperatures, salinity and pathogens including viruses. 

            Autophagy is one of the mechanisms that cells use in their combat against viruses, as documented for a large number of representative animal viruses from diverse families and more recently also for plant viruses. An emerging theme from these studies is that viruses have acquired properties to modify autophagy in many ways, including induction, suppression and subversion of autophagy. This outlines autophagy as a potential pathway to combat viruses and additionally viruses as a highly potent resource of autophagy-modulating components (“modifiers”), which can be exploited when modulating autophagy in crop improvement. This project started in 2017 and is funded by the Swedish research council FORMAS.