NIH Postdoctoral Fellow Rice University Rosharon, Texas
Plants are sessile creatures requiring high-functioning cellular quality control mechanisms, including housing vital metabolic reactions in protective membrane-bound organelles arising from the ER or derived from ancient endosymbionts. The sequestering of oxidative reactions, fats, and tools to mitigate the harmful effects caused by these reactions also maintain organelle and cellular homeostasis. Although this sequestration protects the cell from free lipids, superoxide radicals, and reactive oxygen and nitrogen species, these compounds can damage the organelle and the proteins housed within it – requiring turnover. This damage is mitigated by resident chaperones and proteases, ubiquitination for subsequent proteasome degradation, and whole organelle degradation via specialized autophagy. This symposium will focus on the dynamics of these organelles and the molecular mechanism by which they maintain their proteome during growth and development and in response to abiotic and biotic stressors.