Towards understanding the role of the extreme ribosome heterogeneity of plants

Abstract:

Translational regulation has long been recognized as a vital process in the cell responses to the environment and in the execution of developmental programs, yet still little is known about the selective translation of specific mRNAs and its regulation. Research in my lab aims at understanding the role of translational regulation in developmental and environmental responses, and we are approaching it from different perspectives: 1) we are trying to identify the translational machinery and RNA-binding proteins involved in the translational regulation of hormonal, nutritional and defense signaling pathways; 2) we are studying ribosome heterogeneity in Arabidopsis and trying to determine whether it is involved in the selective translation of specific mRNAs under different cell conditions; and 3) we are trying to determine de translational landscape of the plant-virus interaction, for which we are using both virus-resistant and susceptible plants. To carry out these tasks, we are employing phenotypical analyses, polysome fractionation, RNA-seq, RNA immunoprecipitation, and TRAP-seq. In this seminar, I will focus on our work on ribosome heterogeneity, which we are studying characterizing several Arabidopsis RP families; here I will present our results with the eL24 family, composed of two paralogs; and on our characterization of ribosome-binding proteins that may confer new properties to the translating ribosomes. Our results strongly point towards specialization in the Arabidopsis ribosomes.