Glucose is a universal nutrient preferred by most organisms and serves essential roles in energy supply, carbon storage, biosyntheses, and carbon skeleton and cell wall formation. The ability to sense glucose and its deprivation is of fundamental importance in organisms as diverse as E. coli, yeast, flies, mammals, and plants. The significance of glucose as a direct and central signaling molecule in multi-cellular animals and plants has only been recently recognized. In plants whose life revolves around sugar production through photosynthesis, glucose has emerged as a key regulator of many vital processes, including embryogenesis, germination, seedling development, root, stem and shoot growth, carbon and nitrogen metabolism, reproduction, stress responses, and senescence. Our goal is to understand how plants sense glucose signals to control gene expression and modulate growth and development. Studies of glucose responses in plants will enhance our general understanding of glucose signaling mechanisms conserved in other eukaryotes from yeast to mammals. Complementary genomic, proteomic, genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular strategies and tools will be used to study glucose signaling pathways in Arabidopsis thaliana as a plant model.
Four specific aims are:
Aim 1. Genome-wide identification and molecular genetic analysis of glucose responsive genes. We will combine the power of glucose signaling mutants and global gene expression profiling to identify glucose responsive genes and perform functional analysis of selected target genes.
Aim 2. Proteomic and genetic analysis of the HXK1 protein complexes in glucose signaling. We will identify the key components of the nuclear HXK1 protein complexes and investigate the function of novel regulatory genes in glucose signaling using genetic, cellular and biochemical tools.
Aim 3. Genetic analysis of the gin2 suppressor (g/s) mutants. A genetic approach will be taken to identify novel genes involved in HXK1-mediated signaling.
Aim 4. Genomic and reverse genetic analysis of glucose deprivation responses. We will study the functions of Arabidopsis protein kinases (KIN10 and KIN11) that control diverse genes in glucose deprivation and stress responses.
| Shi, Lin; Wu, Yue; Sheen, Jen (2018) TOR signaling in plants: conservation and innovation. Development 145: |
| Chung, Hoo Sun; Sheen, Jen (2017) MAPK Assays in Arabidopsis MAMP-PRR Signal Transduction. Methods Mol Biol 1578:155-166 |
| Liu, Kun-Hsiang; Niu, Yajie; Konishi, Mineko et al. (2017) Discovery of nitrate-CPK-NLP signalling in central nutrient-growth networks. Nature 545:311-316 |
| Li, Lei; Sheen, Jen (2016) Dynamic and diverse sugar signaling. Curr Opin Plant Biol 33:116-125 |
| Cheng, Zhenyu; Li, Jian-Feng; Niu, Yajie et al. (2015) Pathogen-secreted proteases activate a novel plant immune pathway. Nature 521:213-6 |
| Li, Jian-Feng; Zhang, Dandan; Sheen, Jen (2015) Targeted plant genome editing via the CRISPR/Cas9 technology. Methods Mol Biol 1284:239-55 |
| Xiong, Yan; Sheen, Jen (2015) Novel links in the plant TOR kinase signaling network. Curr Opin Plant Biol 28:83-91 |
| Hamel, Louis-Philippe; Sheen, Jen; Séguin, Armand (2014) Ancient signals: comparative genomics of green plant CDPKs. Trends Plant Sci 19:79-89 |
| Xiong, Yan; Sheen, Jen (2014) The role of target of rapamycin signaling networks in plant growth and metabolism. Plant Physiol 164:499-512 |
| Zhou, Jinggeng; Wu, Shujing; Chen, Xin et al. (2014) The Pseudomonas syringae effector HopF2 suppresses Arabidopsis immunity by targeting BAK1. Plant J 77:235-45 |
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