Peter Lundquist
Michigan State University, MI·Plant Science & Agriculture·Early-career
Plants cannot move away from heat, drought or strong light, so they adjust from within. Chloroplasts, the compartments where photosynthesis happens, contain tiny fat-filled droplets called plastoglobules.
- Fields
Plant Science & Agriculture
Biochemistry
Biology
- Topics
plastoglobules
lipid droplets
chloroplast
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2029
What they work on
- Measure the protein kinase activity of each of the six plastoglobule ABC1 kinases (ABC1Ks), enzymes that add phosphate tags to proteins, using in vitro kinase assays with ABC1Ks expressed in a separate host organism.
- Define the phospho-regulatory network of plastoglobules, identifying which chloroplast lipid-droplet proteins each ABC1K phosphorylates, with large-scale phosphoproteomics.
- Dissect how the unusual N- and C-terminal extensions at the start and end of each ABC1K affect its function.
- Determine the biological roles of ABC1Ks in stress tolerance and development by examining plant knockout and overexpressor lines with phenotyping and lipidomics.
More about the research
These droplets are believed to help coordinate how plants respond to environmental stress. Yet their actual molecular jobs have never been experimentally confirmed. This project asks how plastoglobules support stress tolerance and developmental transitions, which are the shifts from one stage of growth to the next.
Why it matters
Plastoglobules are part of the stress-tolerance machinery shared by all plants. Learning how their main enzymes work could eventually point to ways of helping crops withstand environmental stress. That knowledge could help support agricultural productivity and food security.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Klaas Van Wijk
Cornell University, NY·Plant Science & Agriculture
Determine which N-terminal amino acids act as degrons (destruction signals) in chloroplasts, using a new in vivo quantitative reporter system and testing the roles of the recognizer ClpS1 and the Clp chaperone-protease system.
Karl Schmitz
University of Delaware, DE·Biochemistry
Use phosphoproteomics to identify stress conditions that raise phosphoarginine (pArg) levels in mycobacteria, test whether pArg is needed for stress tolerance, and find the arginine kinases and phosphatases that add and remove it.
Doris Wagner
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Plant Science & Agriculture
Identify the enhancers and transcription factors that switch on TERMINAL FLOWER1 (TFL1), the gene that keeps the shoot tip from becoming a flower, in the shoot apex, using inducible genetic tools and high-resolution spatial and temporal measurements.
The school
Michigan State University: 28 labs on PI Pages, $932M a year on research, 555 research doctorates a year.
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