SSHelectPhagy · Regulation of Selective autophagy by sulfide through persulfidation of protein targets.

The researcher will address the contribution of sulfide to regulation of selective autophagy in plants through persulfidation. This fellowship will be carried out at Iowa State University under the supervision of Prof. Bassham. The researcher will return to the European host, the University of Seville for 12 months under the supervision of Dr.Gotor at the Institute of Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis (IBVF). This project aims at understanding of selective autophagy regulation by sulfide in plants. Autophagy has conserved functions in development, cellular homeostasis, and stress responses from yeast to plants and mammals. In plants, autophagy is critically important in many aspects of plant life, including seedling establishment, plant development, stress resistance, metabolism and reproduction. It contributes to intracellular homeostasis in cells by selectively degrading aggregated proteins, damaged mitochondria, ribosomes, toxic macromolecules, and pathogens to prevent toxicity. This selective autophagy is mediated by the binding of adaptor proteins, which links a cargo targeted for degradation to the autophagosome machinery. An increasing number of targets for selective autophagy under different stress conditions have emerged in recent years, but the underlying mechanisms of their regulation are still so far unknown. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) acts as an inhibitor of autophagy induced by nutrient deprivation and its mechanism has been proposed to be through persulfidation of specific targets. Several autophagy (ATG)-related proteins have been identified as modified by persulfidation in previous studies. The overall aim of this project is to shed light to the role of sulfide in the regulation of selective autophagy, mainly of mitochondria and ER, through persulfidation, and to broaden the range of plant targets for mitophagy and reticulophagy that are signaled by sulfide.