Our Research

Quantifying Cellular Compartment Populations

Plant cells have complex endomembrane systems that include multiple Golgi and trans-Golgi compartments that move throughout the cell. We know very little about how similar (or different) these Golgi are, what types of populations there may be, or how they are coordinated to support plant cell growth.

We use plants expressing fluorescent protein organelle markers and molecular cargo proteins with live-cell imaging techniques to visualise endomembrane compartments. We are interested in describing how endomembrane compartments move in different conditions.

We are also developing new methods that will help us isolate these compartment populations so that we can better characterise their behaviour and molecular properties.

Mapping Vesicle Trafficking Routes

Molecular cargo such as proteins, lipid, and polysaccharides are transported in and out of the plant cell inside small compartments called vesicles. These vesicles are generated at the membranes of different organelles and help move their contents through the cell to their destination.

When vesicles get to the Golgi, their contents are sorted and redistributed towards their functional destination. How cargo is packaged and delivered not not well understood and we are interested in knowing if different types of cargo are packaged in the same types of vesicles or if cargo take different routes to their final destination.

We have molecular tools that will help us follow cargo through the endomembrane system to their destination and we use these tools to test how endomembrane compartment organisation affects these pathways.

Uncovering the Fundamentals of Plant Cell Compartmentalisation

There are many endomembrane compartments and large protein families are involved in its function and regulation. This expansion of complexity can make it difficult to develop experiments that focus on coordinated and dynamic functions where there is regulatory redundancy.

We are interested in using early land plant models like moss to identify core molecular mechanisms required for endomembrane organisation and function.