The IPB has once again been recognized for its exemplary actions in terms of equal opportunity-oriented personnel and organizational policies and has received the TOTAL E-QUALITY certification for the…
The Plant Science Student Conference (PSSC) has been organised by students from the two Leibniz institutes, IPK and IPB, every year for the last 20 years. In this interview, Christina Wäsch (IPK) and…
In plants, the cortical ER network is connected to the plasma membrane through the ER-PM contact sites (EPCS), whose structures are maintained by EPCS resident proteins and the cytoskeleton. Strong co-alignment between EPCS and the cytoskeleton is observed in plants, but little is known of how the cytoskeleton is maintained and regulated at the EPCS. Here we have used a yeast-two-hybrid screen and subsequent in vivo interaction studies in plants by FRET-FLIM analysis, to identify two microtubule binding proteins, KLCR1 (Kinesin Light Chain Related protein 1) and IQD2 (IQ67-Domain 2) that interact with the actin binding protein NET3C and form a component of plant EPCS, that mediates the link between the actin and microtubule networks. The NET3C-KLCR1-IQD2 module, acting as an actin-microtubule bridging complex, has a direct influence on ER morphology. Their loss of function mutants, net3a/NET3C RNAi, 0klcr1 or iqd2, exhibit defects in pavement cell morphology which we suggest is linked to the disorganization of both actin filaments and microtubules. In conclusion, our results reveal a novel cytoskeletal associated complex, which is essential for the maintenance and organization of both cytoskeletal structure and ER morphology at the EPCS, and for normal plant cell morphogenesis.