Project (Salma Balazadeh)

Regulation and role of autophagy in priming-induced stem cell activity and heat stress protection

In higher plants, the shoot apical meristem (SAM) is crucial for the development of aboveground organs and overall plant growth. While the molecular regulatory mechanisms that control SAM structure and maintenance under normal conditions are relatively well understood, much less is known about how the shoot apex, and the SAM in particular, responds to and recovers from abiotic stress.
In this project, we aim to investigate the role of autophagy in the SAM during thermopriming and in conferring protection against heat stress. The project will assess autophagy activity in the SAM, examine how its alteration affects SAM responses to heat, and analyze the transcriptional regulation of autophagy as well as proteins selectively targeted by this process. This research combines molecular, genetic, and cellular approaches to uncover the contribution of autophagy to thermomemory in the SAM. The project will include plant heat treatments, generation of transgenic lines, screening of mutants for heat responses, fluorescence and confocal microscopy, western blot analysis, and gene regulatory techniques such as RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), and electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA), among others.


Your skills