iPHACTORY: Interdisciplinary study of photosynthetic glandular trichomes as metabolic cell factories

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Anna Matuszynska; Professor Dr. Alain Tissier
• Subject Area: Plant Biochemistry and Biophysics ; Bioinformatics and Theoretical Biology
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 420069095

Higher plants acquired various protective mechanisms in order to increase their environmental fitness. One strategy against biotic attacks involves the production of numerous specialised metabolites for direct or indirect plant defence. In this context, glandular trichomes play an important role in plants survival. Localised on the surface of the aerial parts of plants, they produce, store and secrete high amounts of a wide range of chemically diverse compounds. Due to extremely high metabolic fluxes, production of some can reach even up to 20% of the leaf dry weight, qualifying glandular trichomes as true metabolic cell factories. Many of these metabolites, besides exhibiting antifungal, insecticide or pesticide properties, are of a commercial importance, leading to an increased attention in trichome biology in recent years. Despite multidisciplinary research efforts, a number of questions regarding the bioenergetics of the operation of glandular trichomes remain unanswered. Our gap-in-knowledge on factors regulating the production of metabolites calls for a fundamental research investigating flux distribution through various known and yet, to be elucidated, precursor pathways. We aim to discover how the efficient production of specialised metabolites is reached and what are the origins of carbon and energy supply that maintain such extremely high metabolic fluxes in plant glandular trichomes. We will achieve that by applying an interdisciplinary approach, integrating knowledge from multi-omics experiments with mathematical modelling and computational analyses. As a model system, we will work on photosynthetically active trichomes of tomato. Environmental and genetic perturbations of the system will provide additional insight on the maintenance of the metabolic productivity investigating the possible involvement of a C4-photosynthesis-like network. The mathematical models generated by this project will form the basis for the development of innovative metabolic engineering strategies in plants and other organisms for the production of the most diverse class of secondary metabolites: terpenoids.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants