De Clercq Inge

Inter-organelle Stress Signalling

To be able to survive constantly changing and often harmful environmental conditions, plants must continuously adapt. Therefore, plants have complex mechanisms that sense and transduce environmental stimuli into adaptive and defence responses. Organelles within the cell are thought to be important sensors of such stresses, such as water limitation or pathogen attack. They communicate their stressed status with the nucleus to activate tolerance mechanisms and defence responses against the incoming stresses. We have previously revealed a novel mechanism of how mitochondria, chloroplasts, and the endoplasmic reticulum communicate stress signals to coordinate stress signal transduction into adaptive responses in the nucleus. However, we still lack a profound mechanistic understanding of how organelles cooperate with each other during stress responses. The signalling sources within the organelles, their release and/or propagation, and their perception by other organelles and eventually by the nucleus are still enigmatic. Therefore, the Inter-organelle Stress Signalling team performs studies to understand the complex organelle-organelle and organelle-to-nucleus cross-talk using high-end multi-omics and cell biology approaches.