Seminarios IHSM La Mayora - Katharina Merchante (IHSM La Mayora UMA-CSIC)

Title: Deciphering the role and mechanisms of translation regulation in plant developmental and environmental responses 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 defence signalling 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 talk about the advances we are making towards addressing these objectives.