Research Boycheva Woltering

Autophagy, literally the process of eating oneself, is one of the main pathways by which cells are capable of degrading and re-utilizing the building blocks of unused structures and molecules. Briefly, this process consists of sequestration of a portion of the cytoplasm in a double membrane structure formed de novo, the autophagosome, which is then transported to the vacuole and degraded into macromolecules that can be recycled and reused according to the needs of the cell. Autophagy is a highly conserved pathway that arose in the eukaryote lineage but its loss manifests itself differently in the different kingdoms. In mammals, deficiency in autophagy results in carcinogenesis and neurodegenerative diseases. In contrast to that, plants defective in the process are fully viable and functioning under normal conditions although theymanifest aberrations such as chlorosis and early senescence when subjected to prolonged darkness. The onset of autophagy under darkness is due to carbon shortage as plants are unable to perform photosynthesis and are forced to use existing resources. In that way, they are able to maintain critical structures and molecules for future use. Therefore, the loss of chlorophyll under prolonged darkness, which is easy and cost-effective to determine experimentally, can be used as a convenient readout for compromised autophagy. The current project is based on differences in the stimuli perception and signal propagation leading to autophagy activation in naturally occurring Arabidopsis ecotypes and aims to identify previously unknown players in autophagy. A particular emphasis is placed on factors involved in the regulation of autophagy initiation and.