Unbalancing the balance: tracking the alterations in Arabidopsis thaliana metabolome due to changes in APC5 expression

• Grant number: 22/08534-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: October 01, 2022
• End date: March 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Genetics - Plant Genetics
• Principal Investigator: Nubia Barbosa Eloy
• Grantee: Luís Felipe Correa da Silva
• Supervisor: Ralph Bock
• Host Institution: Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALQ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Piracicaba , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Max Planck Society, Potsdam, Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/03212-5 - Functional Characterization of subunit 5 from Anaphase Promoter Complex, BP.MS

Abstract

Plant development encompasses the processes of change in the plant body between its life stages, such as the change from the embryonic to the vegetative stage. Growth, in turn, refers to the irreversible increase in plant volume and biomass. Both processes, ultimately, depends on the increase of the number and size of cells in specific plant tissues. Multicellular organisms, like plants, both growth and development are driven by cell division, which brings together different molecular and biochemical events that allow the emergence of new cells. The cell cycle has four sequential phases (S, G1, M and G2), which temporally separate the DNA replication and cell division. Different metabolic components that act in the cell cycle, such as cyclins, CDKs and replicative enzymes, must act at exact moments in the cycle, which directs the classification of the different phases. The cycle must follow a unidirectional and irreversible direction. Therefore, the agents of a determined phase must be degraded to ensure the fluidity of the process. One of the ways fixed by natural selection within eukaryotes throughout evolution was the use of highly specific and coordinated proteolysis mechanisms, in order to degrade only the components needed at a specific time. One of the cellular pathways in this kind of control is the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS), which, through a multi-enzymatic pathway, specifically marks proteins to be degraded by the 26S proteasome. The Anaphase Promoting Complex (APC) is one of the enzymes responsible for recognizing the substrate to be ubiquitinated in the UPS, and consequently recognized by the 26S proteasome. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the APC is composed of about 14 subunits. The present project aims to functionally characterize the APC subunit 5 of A. thaliana through the use of transgenic plants with different expression levels, in way to understand the roles played by this subunit in the plant development.