Nuclear autophagy in plant health and disease

Autophagy is a conserved degradation and renewal system that controls cellular homeostasis and organismal health in response to various stresses including pathogen infection. Until now, research on plant autophagy has primarily focused on mechanisms and functions in the cytoplasm.

However, it remains largely unexplored if and how autophagic components and processes in the nucleus contribute to nuclear homeoastasis, gene regulation, or maintenance of genome integrity.

By exploring virus infections, this project aims to investigate the role of nuclear autophagy in host immunity and viral pathogenesis in plants.

We will combine a targeted candidate and proteomics-based profiling approach to identify the interactome of a core autophagy ATG8 protein that was found to localize to a distinct subnuclear compartment during infection with a DNA virus.

ATG8-associated proteins will be assessed for their function as nucleophagic substrates and receptors or as regulators of host and viral gene expression using genetic/epigenetic, biochemical, and cell biological methods.

We will further investigate the role of nuclear autophagy in the DNA damage response and assess the link of autophagy to viral genome stability and evolution.

The research is designed as a four-year postdoc project and will provide fundamental insight how nuclear autophagy shapes host-pathogen interactions. The new knowledge may be applied in translational approaches to improve plant fitness and disease resistance.