This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2019, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. Plants are at the base of all food chains, are vital to materials production, and maintain our atmosphere, making plant research critical for sustainability in a changing world. Plants isolate reactions involved in breaking down fats for energy and hormone production in subcellular compartments called peroxisomes. These reactions support growth and development throughout the life cycle, but also create toxic byproducts that can damage the peroxisome and the entire cell if not degraded. This project focuses on uncovering the mechanism responsible for 'taking the trash out' within cells. The goal is to identify signals responsible for targeting damaged or obsolete peroxisomes for decay in the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. Problems in 'taking the trash out' are believed to contribute to the aging processes in plants, as well as several peroxisome biogenesis disorders in humans. Given that over half of peroxisomal proteins are conserved between plants and humans, peroxisome research in Arabidopsis can impact both agriculture and human health, making it a vital process to study.
The cellular quality control used to manage damaged peroxisomes is a form of specialized autophagy (pexophagy) in which the cell creates a structure to engulf and discard the damaged peroxisome. The research will leverage the recent finding that functional peroxisomes are targeted for destruction by an overzealous autophagy machinery when an Arabidopsis multifunctional protease protein is dysfunctional, leading to the hypothesis that signals responsible for pexophagy are degraded or refolded by the multifunctional protease. Several protein studies will be used to identify interacting proteins, followed by studies to determine how and why the interaction regulates pexophagy. By identifying the signals regulating pexophagy, we can begin to elucidate the stressors that induce pexophagy, the benefits of increased and decreased pexophagy, and how to selectively regulate the activity. The project is designed to expand the expertise of the Fellow into organelle biology. Moreover, the project has manageable subprojects that will be executed by mentored undergraduates from historically underrepresented backgrounds, allowing the Fellow to hone mentoring and management skills needed to successfully run an independent research lab.
This award was co-funded by the Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology Program in the Division of Biological Infrastructure and the Cellular Dynamics and Function Cluster in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences.
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.
