Photosynthetic plants are the principal solar energy converter sustaining life on Earth. Despite its fundamental importance, little is known about how plants sense and adapt to darkness in the daily light-dark cycle or to unpredictable environmental stresses that compromise photosynthesis and respiration and deplete energy supplies. Recent studies have discovered that the evolutionarily conserved Arabidopsis protein kinases, KIN10 and KIN11, control convergent reprogramming of transcription in response to seemingly unrelated darkness, sugar and stress conditions. The project aims to build a new conceptual framework of energy signaling in plants by uncovering the diverse physiological and developmental functions, signaling links, and regulatory mechanisms of the conserved energy sensors. Inducible mutant transgenic lines will be use to gain new insight into the roles of energy signaling in plant response and adaptation to diverse environmental challenges, and in plant growth and development. Integrative cellular, biochemical, genetic and genomic approaches will be applied to enhance our understanding of the regulatory mechanisms of energy signaling from the control of sensor activity, stability, localization, partner interactions to its downstream transcription factors and primary target genes. This project represents a new line of research that integrates diverse plant responses and regulation into convergent energy signaling vital to plant growth and survival. The studies on the regulatory mechanisms of energy signaling are urgently important in light of the rising global needs in the development of renewable biofuels. The basic research will enable targeted genetic modification of carbon allocation, growth and development, architecture, and stress and pathogen resistance, all major determinants of crop yield and renewable energy production. The project will provide unique training opportunities for students and postdocs in multidisciplinary and integrative research, and promote woman and minority scientists as future research leaders. The Principal Investigator of the project offers educational and outreach programs serving the plant community and the general public.
Description of the network of genes selected KIN10 At3g01090, KIN11 At3g29160, KINB1 At5g21170, KINB2 At4g16360, KINB3 At2g28060, KINBG At1g09020, KING At3g48530
URL of the Arabidopsis 2010 project http://genetics.mgh.harvard.edu/sheenweb/main_page.html
The universal energy signaling networks sense and integrate nutrient and stress status in cells and promote growth or sustain survival in all lives from bacteria to plants and humans. Despite the essential and multifaceted regulatory roles of energy signaling in gene expression, physiology, metabolism, cell proliferation, growth and development, as well as intimate connections to human health, diseases and life span, the molecular and cellular mechanisms remain enigmatic in multicellular plants and animals. The major goal of the project is to build a new conceptual framework of energy signaling in plants using innovative and integrated approaches to uncover the mystery of energy regulation in life, which has been taken for granted in our daily life but poorly understood. Our research progresses have started to uncover the surprisingly diverse physiological, metabolic and developmental functions, unexpected signaling links, and new regulatory mechanisms of the evolutionarily conserved energy sensor protein kinases, KIN10, KIN11 and TOR (target of rapamycin), as master regulators of energy signaling networks using Arabidopsis thaliana as a plant model to understand fundamental principles in biology and life. These protein kinases sense nutrient and stress signals in different biological contexts to reflect cellular energy status and globally regulate transcription, translation, metabolism and plant growth and development. The energy signaling networks form the indispensible regulatory framework to support or gate other regulatory systems modulated by hormones, regulatory peptides and small RNAs, and environmental cues. Each protein kinase has multiple subcellular locales and action partners and substrates to govern different aspects of the energy and stress regulatory networks, which is subjected to environmental modulations by light, other nutrients, stresses and microbes. The establishment of new paradigms in energy responses and regulation in plants will enhance our understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms of gene regulatory networks for future engineering of plants in agricultural improvement, biofuel production and environmental protection.
