Connecting selective autophagy and programmed cell death in plant immunity

Autophagy is a conserved cellular degradation system that plays a key role in plant immunity, including the control of pathogen-triggered programmed cell death (PCD).

We have previously found that autophagy promotes the immunity-related hypersensitive response (HR) while limiting stress- and disease-related forms of cell death. However, the mechanisms underlying the dual role of autophagy in PCD regulation are still unknown.

This project aims to analyse whether different selective autophagy pathways eliminate negative and positive determinants of cell death in a context-dependent manner, thereby defining autophagic activities in PCD promotion or restriction.

To this end, we will identify by quantitative proteomics the interactomes of core autophagy ATG8 proteins upon HR-inducing bacterial infection.

Candidate proteins will be assessed for their function as autophagic targets, receptors, or regulators in pathogen-triggered PCD using genetic, biochemical and cell biological methods.

We will further investigate the engagement of selective proteasome degradation ("proteaphagy") as well as the link between autophagy and "ferroptosis", a novel iron-dependent form of cell death, in immunity-related PCD. The research is designed as a three-year postdoc project at the Department of Plant Biology at Uppsala BioCenter, SLU.

Our data will provide fundamental insight how selective autophagy shapes PCD and immune responses, and may be applied to improve disease resistance in crop plants.