Interdepartmental Plant Biology 2025 Spring Student Seminar Series (PLBIO 6960) 

Presentation:

Response of autophagy-deficient maize atg10 mutants to heat stress

Abstract:

Autophagy, a highly conserved cellular process that degrades and recycles damaged proteins and organelles, plays a crucial role in maintaining cellular homeostasis under stress conditions. In maize (Zea mays), heat stress is a significant environmental challenge that adversely affects growth, development, and yield. Autophagy is involved in mitigating the damaging effects of heat stress by promoting the removal of misfolded or denatured proteins, damaged organelles, and toxic byproducts that accumulate under elevated temperatures. While evidence from other plant species suggests that autophagy contributes to thermotolerance, the relationship between autophagy and heat stress in maize remains poorly understood. We have investigated the role of autophagy in heat stress responses in maize by examining autophagy-deficient atg10 mutants. We observed that transcripts encoding heat shock proteins (HSPs) are upregulated in atg10 mutants under heat stress under field conditions. This up regulation of HSP genes in the absence of functional autophagy indicates a potential compensatory response in the atg10 mutants, possibly reflecting an altered heat stress adaptation mechanism. To further elucidate the molecular mechanisms, we performed RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) and identified differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in wild-type (WT) and atg10 mutant plants under heat stress. In summary, this study illuminates the current understanding of the role of autophagy in heat stress tolerance in maize, highlighting the potential for autophagy-based strategies in improving heat stress resilience in maize.

Presenter: Vishadinie Jayasinghe

Bassham Lab
Department of Genetics, Development, and Cell Biology

Vishadinie received her B.S. in Plant Biotechnology from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2021. During her undergraduate research, she studied about the genetic diversity of Piper species in Sri Lanka. After graduation, she worked as an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Colombo. She then started the Interdepartmental Plant Biology program at Iowa State University in Fall 2022 and joined Dr. Diane Bassham's lab in Spring 2023. Her current work focuses on the function and regulation of autophagy in maize.

Jayasinghe Seminar Flyer (PDF)