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The plant endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is the cellular organelle that regulates the flux of proteins and lipids into the secretory pathway, and is responsible for storing large amount of proteins for human and animal nutrition. The ER has a unique and dynamic architecture, which changes to allow for different biosynthetic functions. Building on our collaborative work over the last 5 years, our team combines expertise in plant molecular and cell biology, biochemistry, microscopy and cereal genetics to bring understanding of ER structure/function relationships to the next level. We aim at understanding the key molecular determinants of ER shape by studying their function, regulation and interactions. We also propose to investigate interorganellar cooperation by analysing putative contact points between ER and plasma membrane and ER and protein storage vacuoles. We will manipulate the key ER morphogens and assess how changes in ER shape affect protein and lipid biosynthesis and storage. This work will be perfomed in model plants and, importantly, in seeds of cereals (barley, weat and maize) in order to test directly the ER structure/function relationships in these crop models. |