Alison Sinclair (＊Alison Sinclairさんは海外体験入学で来所しています。) （University of Guelph, Canada）

2007年12月17日(月) 16:00

明大寺地区職員会館２階大会議室

高次細胞機構研究部門 西村 幹夫 内線7500

Plants possess strategies for dealing with many stresses, from temperature to xenobiotic chemicals. Although it is known that these stresses can result in injury to the plant, the earliest signs of injury are not well characterized. Novel approaches are required to examine the inner workings of a plant cell's earliest response to a stress.


My work investigates early sub-cellular responsiveness of plants to reactive oxygen species (ROS) using peroxisomes as rapidly responding, model organelles, that display varying degrees of motility and pleomorphy. The work has resulted in the creation of new transgenic lines in Arabidopsis that carry multiple fluorescent probes and allow visualization of up to three organelles simultaneously.


Further, a 4-D live-imaging aided analysis of peroxisomal response to ROS has revealed hitherto unknown links between peroxisome behaviour and the dynamics of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). The peroxisome–ER link was analyzed in-depth using an Arabidopsis dynamin related protein (DRP3A) mutant apm1-1 and is supported by both confocal laser scanning microscopy and ultra-structural electron microscopic studies. The observations constitute the necessary groundwork, and provide the 'proof of concept' for the long-term goal of creating an Early Intracellular Response Profile of Plants (EIRPP).