Investigating how endocytosis and autophagy jointly contribute to plant survival and development

• Applicant: Professor Yasin Dagdas, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Plant Cell and Developmental Biology
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 568404408

The interconnectivity of the plant endomembrane system allows for multiple parallel trafficking routes to secure membrane protein homeostasis. This project aims to investigate the interplay between two trafficking pathways that degrade proteins by vacuolar delivery, endocytosis and autophagy. The project starts from the observation that a mutant, which is impaired in endocytosis, is synthetically lethal when combined with a mutant, which is impaired in autophagy. This led to the hypothesis that impaired autophagic degradation of membrane proteins deposits these proteins at the plasma membrane, where they become targets of endocytosis. Subsequently, impairing endocytosis in the absence of autophagy fails to restore homeostasis and is detrimental for plant development. The overall goal of this project is to challenge this hypothesis. This will be achieved by exploring the synthetic lethality according to the expertise of both host laboratories. We will also tackle the nature of the synthetic lethality from a proteome wide perspective and we will functionally characterize a ranked subset of proteins that emerge from our proteomic approaches. Our results will broaden our understanding of how endocytic and autophagic degradation are connected and to what extent this interplay compensates for the loss of one of either pathways. The project builds on the core expertise of both host labs and it will largely benefit from the synergy that the various approaches will generate.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Belgium
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Daniël Van Damme