Research Summary

Jasmonates (JAs) are signalling molecules essential for the survival of plants in nature since they are important activators of stress responses and developmental programs. The main focus of our lab is to understand mechanistically the JA signalling pathway in plants; knowledge that is basic to design biotech and agronomical applications that improve plant resistance to stresses and plant yield. We have traditionally worked in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana but we currently focus on the Liverwort Marchantia polymorpha due to its remarkable genetic advantages, such as very low gene redundancy.

Research Lines

The main current research lines focus on the functional characterization of several elements regulating plant responses to jasmonate, both dependent and independent of the receptor COI1:

ii) identification of new regulators of the canonical COI1-dependent jasmonate pathway by means of genetic screens. We recently isolated numerous novel mutants insensitive to jasmonate in Marchantia polymorpha plants and we defined the casual mutations by NGS. The ongoing generation by CRISPR-Cas of loss-of-function mutants and their analyses will evaluate the role of these elements in the jasmonate pathway. We also aim to define the mechanistic role of these novel regulators and address if their activity is conserved in vascular plants.

iii) analysis of the role of different signaling elements (such as Heat Shock Factor, Ribosome Biogenesis Factor and Cyclophilin 20) regulated by jasmonates with reactive electrophile (RES) properties, defining the COI1-independent pathway. We showed that RES jasmonates regulate thermotolerance in streptophyte plants, ranging from algae to angiosperm (Monte et al., 2020). We are currently defining the contribution of different elements in the RES jasmonates regulation of thermotolerance.

iii) identification and evolutionary conservation of the JA co-receptor, JAZ, which represses the activity of these TFs in the absence of the hormone (Chini et al., Nature 2007; Monte et al., Mol. Plant 2019).

iv) Elucidation of the molecular components involved in JAZ-mediated repression of the JA response; the NINJA adaptor and the TOPLESS co-repressor (Pauwels et al., Nature 2010).

v) The determination of the molecular mechanisms of JA-pathway regulation by environmental signals (Gimenez-Ibanez et al PLoS Biol 2014; Chico et al., Plant Cell, 2014; Chico et al., PNAS, 2020).

vi) Identification of an alternative JA synthesis pathway and evolutionary analyses the JA biosynthetic pathway (Chini et al., Nature Chem Biol 2018; Soriano et al., New Phytologist 2022; Chini et al., New Phytol. 2023)

vii) characterization of evolutionary conservation of plant defences in basal plants (Gimenez- Ibanez et al., Current Biology 2019).

viii) identification of a new mechanism of thermotolerance in plants (Monte et al., Current Biol 2020).

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