Research Projects

Around 450 million years ago, plants transitioned from water to land, acquiring stomata that mediate carbon dioxide and water vapour inflow and outflow. Stomata allowed plants to adapt to the sessile lifestyle by aiding photosynthesis and regulating hydration. The moss Physcomitrium patens, formerly named Physcomitrella patens, is an ideal organism to study the evolution of stomata differentiation in early land plants. Light intensity and spectral composition were major changes encountered during terrestrialization. Studies in Arabidopsis have indicated that light plays a crucial role in the development of stomata. This proposal aims to define the roles of light and light signalling components in Physcomitrium stomata formation. The German and Indian groups involved in this project have been studying light signalling in plants for years. Prof. Ute Hoecker's lab in Germany has contributed to the characterization of the Arabidopsis COP1/SPA complex, which acts as an E3 ubiquitin ligase to degrade several positive regulators of light signalling in the dark. Dr. Sourav Datta's group in India has been instrumental in characterizing the role of the BBX B-box containing proteins family of zinc finger transcription factors in regulating light signalling. The specific activities and methodology include generation of CRISPR/Cas9 mediated mutants of PpBBX11, characterization of stomatal development in mutants of PpBBX11, PpCOP1 and PpSPA, expression of the coding sequence of PpBBX11, PpCOP1 and PpSPA in Arabidopsis bbx11, cop1 and spa, and investigating the physical interaction of PpBBX11 with PpCOP1 and PpSPA proteins.