PhD in Systems Biology (2010-2014) -

"Action of NF-Y Transcription Factors in Plant Stress Responses"

Supervisors: Prof. Vicky Buchanan-Wollaston and Assoc. Prof. Katherine Denby

Global food security is one of the prominent challenges facing mankind in a world of increasing population and changing climate. Environmental stresses, such as drought, high salinity and pathogen attack, cause significant crop losses worldwide. Consequently, plants have evolved complex and highly regulated stress response mechanisms. Although there are certainly stimuli-specific pathways, many genes appear to be induced by multiple stresses supporting the existence of a common ‘core stress response’ transcriptional network. The PRESTA project aims to elucidate this stress-responsive regulatory network.

The NF-Y (Nuclear Factor Y) transcription factor family seem to be key regulators in multiple stress responses. NF-Y functions as a heterotrimeric complex consisting of NF-YA, NF-YB and NF-YC subunits which, in Arabidopsis, are encoded by multigene families that could theoretically combine into 1690 unique TFs. This combinatorial diversity could enable fine-tuning of transcriptional regulation by activating specific groups of stress-responsive genes.

My project aims to identify functional NF-Y complexes involved in regulating plant stress responses and to elucidate the direct downstream targets and upsteam regulators. I am currently using network inference, together with yeast-1 and 2-hybrid assays and microarray analysis of altered expression mutants to generate and test small-scale networks centred around a subset of key regulatory NF-Y subunits. Current work is focussed on the determination of a complete NF-Y TF complex, with the recent identification of a putative trimer which is now being investigated in vivo.

 

Poster Presentation at the recent International Conference on Arabidopsis Research (ICAR),

Sydney, Australia. June 2013

http://blog.garnetcommunity.org.uk/reports-from-icar-2013-emily-breeze/