Circadian control of seasonal rhythms in Arabidopsis

December 2015

  • Date: Dec 2, 2015
  • Time: 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Daniel Seaton
  • Location: Central Building
  • Room: Seminar Room
  • Host: Thiago Alexandre Moraes
Plants respond to seasonal cues in order to anticipate the expected environmental changes that accompany the changing seasons. Well-known examples of seasonal control of development in plants are photoperiodic control of flowering and hypocotyl elongation, both of which are regulated by the circadian clock via the CONSTANS (CO) and PHYTOCHROME INTERACTING FACTOR (PIF) transcription factors, respectively. We recently developed an integrated mathematical model of these pathways, identifying novel signalling dynamics across hundreds of co-regulated transcripts. Beyond these canonical examples of seasonal regulation, we have also identified a general principle of photoperiodic regulation of protein expression. This regulation arises from changes in the timing of bulk protein synthesis with photoperiod. We validated a simple model of this effect using quantitative transcriptomic and proteomic datasets across a range of photoperiods. My ongoing work seeks to identify other aspects of plant physiology that show seasonal responses, and to uncover the molecular mechanisms of these responses. The ongoing proliferation of genome-scale datasets in plant biology means that computational approaches are fast becoming a vital tool for exploring new hypotheses in these diverse contexts.
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