Analyzing plant cell wall integrity maintenance and its coordination with plant immunity

Populært vitenskapelige sammendrag

Selv om planter ikke kan rømme fra fare, har de blitt eksperter på å tilpasse seg et skiftende miljø. Tilpasning krever kontinuerlig overvåking av både miljøet og planten selv, samt adaptive og nøye kontrollerte endringer i metabolske og cellulære prosesser for å sikre overlevelse (også kjent som planteplastisitet). På molekylært nivå innebærer dette oppfattelse og integrering av mekaniske og kjemiske stimuli, etterfulgt av generering og modulasjon av kvantitative kjemiske signaler som regulerer adaptive responser. Tilgjengelig evidens tyder på at mekanismen for opprettholdelse av celleveggens integritet (CWI) ligger til grunn for plastisiteten, ettersom den overvåker den funksjonelle integriteten til celleveggene og opprettholder den ved å initiere adaptive endringer i cellevegg og cellulær metabolisme. Derfor representerer den et utmerket modellsystem for å analysere prosesser som er ansvarlige for oppfattelse av mekaniske stimuli og generering av kjemiske signaler som regulerer tilpasning til et skiftende miljø.

Ved å gjennomføre tre arbeidsmoduler vil vi undersøke de cellulære hendelsene som finner sted under CWI-vedlikehold, karakterisere virkemåten til den ansvarlige mekanismen, og fastslå hvordan dens aktivitet integreres med andre signalprosesser som regulerer plantens tilpasning til miljømessig stress.

Popular Science Presentation

Since plants cannot run away in the face of danger they have become experts in adaption to a changing environment. Adaptation requires constant monitoring of the environment and the plant itself as well as adaptive, tightly controlled changes in metabolic and cellular processes to ensure survival (also described as plant plasticity). On the molecular level this means perception and integration of mechanical and chemical stimuli followed by generation and modulation of quantitative chemical signals regulating adaptive responses. The available evidence suggests that the plant cell wall integrity (CWI) maintenance mechanism underlies plasticity, since it monitors the functional integrity of cell walls and maintains it by initiating adaptive changes in cell wall and cellular metabolism. Therefore, it represents an excellent model system to analyze processes responsible for perception of mechanical stimuli and generation of chemical signals regulating adaptation to a changing environment.

By pursuing three work packages we will investigate the cellular events taking place during CWI maintenance, characterize the mode of action of the mechanism responsible and establish how its activity is integrated with other signalling processes regulating plant adaptation to environmental stress.

Ongoing project activities, achievements and events

12.06.2025

Congratulations to Bjørnar Alterås (supervised by Michaela Ticha) who has successfully defended his MSc thesis entitled: Identification and characterization of novel candidates implicated in the plant cell wall integrity maintenance mechanism. CONGRATULATIONS! Impressive achievement!

30.01.2025

Thorsten has given a presentation at the Photonics West conference in San Francisco on the Brillouin Microscopy-based research of the group into abiotic stress responses in Arabidopsis thaliana.

29.01.2025

Thorsten has contributed to a manuscript, which has been published in Plant Journal summarizing the future of Arabidopsis thaliana as a model organism.

05.11.2024

Congratulations to Luis who has contributed successfully to a publication from the Marhavy group in Umeå involving his previous work on the NFR project, which has been published in Developmental Cell.

27.09.2024

Researcher night at NTNU, 1500 pupils from local high schools visit the natural sciences building. The group is hosting a stand showcasing plant science while Dhika Amanda is giving a talk about how plants monitor their health.

3.09.2024

The group has successfully hosted the 8th International BioBrillouin conference in Trondheim. Appr. 75 attendees from more than a dozen countries came to Trondheim for this two-day event. Luis showcased the Brillouin microscopy-based research activities supported by the NFR project. We also appreciated the financial support from 6 different companies, which enabled us to keep registration fees low thus facilitating attendance of PhD students and postdocs.

25.06.2024

Michaela Ticha is giving a lecture at the ASPB conference in Honolulu, Hawaii.

02.06.2024

Congratulations to Christina Michelle Colla who has successfully defended her MSc thesis supervised by Tereza Ticha. She has worked on the characterization of candidate genes implicated in cell wall integrity maintenance.

01.06.2024

Welcome to Vivien Klein, who has joined the group to work as an engineer on the project.

05.01.2024

Congratulations to Thorsten for being awarded the prize for research excellence from the faculty of natural sciences, NTNU.

04.01.2024

Congratulations to Michaela Ticha and Tereza Ticha for being awarded ASPB travel fellowships to attend Plant Biology 2024 in Hawaii.

26.10.2023

Today we received the fantastic news that ERC has decided to fund the SYNERGY application we submitted together with the groups of Christine Ziegler, Eilon Shani and Malcolm Bennett. We will investigate int he HYDROSENSING project how plants perceive drought stress. This success has also been covered in general news sites and been only possible due to the previous research activities in the NFR-funded WALLINTEGRITY project.

31.08.-01-09-2023

We´ve had a successful project meeting with our partners from Spain (Professor Antonio Molina) and Belgium (Dr. Ive de Smet) in Trondheim. We used the opportunity to plan the next steps including a research stay for Stacy in Madrid with Professor Antonio Molina, get input on ongoing research and plan how subsequent research projects (exemplified by HYDROSENSING) may be used to support future activities aimed at addressing societal challenges.

11.08.2023

Congratulations to Stacy (PhD student working on the NFR WALLINTEGRIY project) for her first published manuscript in Frontiers in Genetics based on work from her MSc.

09.08.2023

Congratulations to Laura Bacete and Luis Alonso-Baez for publishing a review on novel methods to analyze plant cell wall composition, structure and mechanics in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

20.07.2023

Really happy to welcome Michaela Ticha to the group. She has received her PhD in biochemistry from the Faculty of Science, Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic. She´ll join the NFR-funded WALLINTEGRITY research project.

18.07.2023

Farewell drinks with our visiting ERASMUS PhD student Jiri Sojka from Olomuc in the Czech republic.

06.07.2023

Tereza (MSCA fellow), Stacy (PhD student funded through the NFR WALLINETGRITY project) and Thorsten attended the IPGSA conference in South Korea where Stacy and Tereza presented posters while Thorsten gave an invited seminar.

26.09.2022

The Hamann lab has participated in a local initiative organized by NTNU and the Norwegian research council to popularize scientific research with a stand at the forsknings torget. The stand (designed by Julia Schulz) was awarded the prize for the best stand in the torget! CONGRATULATIONS to everybody who made it happen! Very proud!

11.08.2022

Celebrating Ruben Ørnhaug-Solem successfully defending his MSc thesis entitled: Functional characterization of five genes implicated in cell wall integrity maintenance in Arabidopsis thaliana  Congratulations! Very well done!

13.07.2022

Congratulations to Tereza Ticha (currently employed on the NFR WALLINTEGRITY project) for being awarded a MSCA fellowship (210k Euro) by the European Union. She´ll be able to pursue her research interests in the group in the next years.

24.06.2022

Laura and Luis have successfully chaired a well-attended session on cell wall analytics at the International Conference on Arabidopsis research (ICAR2022) in Belfast. Well done!

10.06.2022

CONGRATULATIONS to Eline Hildrum (supervised by Laura Bacete) who has successfully defended her MSc thesis entitled: The role of two zinc finger protein transcription factors in Arabidopsis thaliana cell wall integrity maintenance.

CONGRATULATIONS to Pernille Moe (supervised by Luis Alonso-Baez) who has successfully defended her MSc thesis entitled: “Investigating the effects of osmotic stress and cellulose biosynthesis inhibition on cell morphology and plasma membrane tension in Arabidopsis thaliana using confocal microscopy and the mechanosensitive Flipper-TR». Both have done excellent work!

07.06.2022

Our collaborator on the NFR Project WALLINTEGRITY Dr. Thomas Dehoux, CNRS Lyon gives the first in person seminar post-COVID.

07.04.2022

Elise Muller has arrived from France. She´ll be spending the next months working with us on development of novel tools. Welcome Elise!

21.08.2021

The kickoff meeting for our NFR project WALLINTEGRITY has been a success with partners from Belgium and Spain joining us on Stokkøya. (from left to right: Bjørn Torger Stokke, Anotnio Molina, Laura Bacete Cano, Tereza Tichá, Anastasiia Ivanova, Thorsten Hamann, Luis Alonso-Baez, Ive de Smet.