Peroxisome Biology of Plants and Microalgae

Peroxisome functions conferring adaptation to abiotic stress

Crop production is threatened by adverse environmental conditions which are further aggravated by global climate change. By 2050 the global population is expected to reach 9 billion, 60-70% of which will be living in developing and underdeveloped nations. With the current trend of increasing crop losses by extreme environmental conditions and the ever increasing population it will be very difficult to keep pace with the demand and supply of major food grains. 

The immediate solution to this problem lies in protecting the standing crop against abiotic stress conditions and to develop stress resistant varieties. This research aims at understanding and optimizing peroxisome-mediated mechanisms of abiotic stress tolerance in both the model plant Arabidopsis and the major staple food crop rice. Our new machine learning-based prediction methods (Lingner et al., 2011, The Plant Cell 23:1556-1572) indicate that a large number of yet unknown proteins are located in peroxisomes. We screened these for proteins with predicted functions in abiotic stress tolerance. The genes of selected candidate proteins are cloned by RT-PCR and investigated for predicted peroxisome localization and abiotic stress induction. Reverse genetics is applied to investigate whether loss-of-function mutants are more susceptible to abiotic stresses. We expect that the outcomes form this work will have far reaching significance in understanding the basic molecular signaling behind stress tolerance in rice, which could further be extend to other plant species of economic importance.