GreenRobust is happy to announce that cluster PI Juan Carlos De la Concepción secured an ERC Starting grant. The project “Mechanisms and molecular innovation in plant cellular dormancy” (MORPHEUS) seeks to unravel the mechanistic basis and molecular evolution of dormancy in plants.

All living organisms face a universal challenge: surviving and thriving in harsh and changing conditions. During evolution, dormancy arose multiple times as a common survival strategy to withstand environmental perturbations in a wide variety of life forms, ranging from bacteria to multicellular eukaryotes. During dormancy, cells enter a state of low metabolic activity that keeps them alive until favorable conditions return. This process prevents the extinction of populations and played a fundamental role in the origin and persistence of life on earth. As they generally do not move, plants rely on dormancy as a long-standing strategy to survive and disperse their offspring. Dormancy is a key component of plant robustness that is fully integrated in their reproductive cycle, thus shaping their ecological success and diversity. 

Protein translation in the ribosomes is the most energy-intensive cellular process, and it must be suppressed during dormancy. Multiple mechanisms for ribosome inactivation, or ribosome dormancy, have independently emerged in different lineages of the tree of life. Yet, while extensively studied in bacteria, yeast and animals, the molecular mechanisms and evolution of ribosome dormancy in plants remain largely unknown. MORPHEUS will combine structural biology, proteomics and comparative genetics across plant model organisms to answer how independent plant lineages evolved separated molecular mechanisms to maintain their ribosomes dormant.