Exploring the intracellular trafficking of cellulose synthases and xylan in post-Golgi compartments
during secondary cell wall construction in Arabidopsis.
Personal description:
I’m originally from Coquitlam, British Columbia, but I grew up on the shores of southern Nova Scotia. I lived in a very rural town, where much of my free time was spent wandering through ragged, hurricane-torn forests and rocky, wildflower-covered beaches. It was easy in that environment to begin wondering about the structural diversity of plants. I became really interested in what makes them so ubiquitous, specifically at the level of their cells, proteins, and genes. From this, I deeply wanted to know if there were bio-inspired technologies waiting to be created in light of plant cell biology.
Throughout my undergraduate degree, I’ve been lucky to have had various interdisciplinary experiences in research, ranging from synthetic biology to machine learning. In the Hallam Lab I investigated a high-throughput technique called Substrate Induced Gene Expression (SIGEX) to discover a neurotoxin-inducible gene present in marine metagenomic samples. With Dr. Steven Hallam, Dr. Eric Ma, and several undergrads, I also worked on developing a deep learning platform to model the trajectory of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein evolution in a continuous numerical space, where patterns of evolution might be more discernible than they are at the level of amino acid sequences. I’ve also been very fortunate to work in the UBC Bioimaging Facility as a research assistant, becoming familiar with the facility’s microscopy equipment. Toward the end of my degree, I found myself returning to the curiosities I had while growing up in Nova Scotia. That’s when I joined the Samuels Lab ready to complete my Honours thesis.
Plant secondary cell walls (SCWs) are responsible for much of the breathtaking structural diversity we see in the natural world, making up a major portion of the Earth’s organic biomass. Two integral components of the SCW are xylan and cellulose, which are fortifying polymers that weave throughout the wall to help it retain its architecture and protective properties. I am exploring the intracellular trafficking mechanisms of xylan and cellulose synthases (CESAs, the proteins that synthesize cellulose) during SCW construction. The two might be trafficked from the Golgi to the plasma membrane with a certain amount of cooperative coordination between their respective biosynthetic machinery. Therefore, co-localizing them in post-Golgi organelles would be insightful for cellulose and xylan biosynthesis, and for the coordination of cell wall construction as a whole. To co-localize CESAs and xylan, I am using immunogold TEM on Arabidopsis cells with upregulated SCW production due to the genetically engineered VND7i system.
Publications:
Hoffmann N., King S., Samuels A.L., McFarlane H.E. (2021). Subcellular coordination of plant cell wall synthesis. Developmental Cell. 56:933-948 [view abstract]
