| Sona
Pandey |
's Laboratory |
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Sona Pandey, Ph.D.
Assistant Member and Principal
Investigator |
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Mailing Address:
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
975 N. Warson Road, St. Louis MO, 63132
Tel: (314) 587-1471 (O);
Fax: (314) 587-1571;
email:
spandey@danforthcenter.org
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Research Interest
The primary area of the Pandey
lab research is elucidating abscisic acid (ABA) signaling
with the ultimate goal of engineering drought tolerance in
plants.
One aspect of this work involves the study of roles of
classic and novel G-protein components in ABA signaling. G
protein signaling pathways are conserved in all eukaryotes.
In humans, an extensive network of hundreds of receptors,
and multiple G protein subunits and downstream effectors
regulate 1/3rd of all signaling pathways
including vision, taste and olfaction. These signaling
pathways are also targets of more than half of all
pharmaceutical drugs. Plant G proteins are similar to their
mammalian counterparts with respect to the diverse signaling
processes they regulate, but are significantly different in
the number of classical G protein components e.g.
the fully sequenced genomes of Arabidopsis and Rice has only
one Gα subunit, one Gβ subunit and 2 Gγ subunits, in
contrast to 23 Gα subunits, 5 Gβ subunits and 12 Gγ subunits
found in humans. Our hypothesis is that the plant G proteins
act as nodal points in a complex signal transduction
network, modulating multiple responses. We are focusing on
two parts of this signaling network, roles of receptor
proteins coupled to G protein signaling or GPCR signaling
and roles of G protein effector proteins.
The other aspect of our research uses stomatal guard cells
as model system for study of stress physiology and drought
tolerance. The precisely controlled movement of guard cells
to open and close the stomata, thus regulating the water
vapor and gas exchange between plant and environment is one
of the most striking phenomena of plant biology.
We are using molecular genetics, biochemistry, genomics,
proteomics, protein-protein interactions, site directed
mutagenesis, and cell biology-based techniques to identify
novel proteins and decipher their roles and mechanism of
action towards engineering plant drought tolerance. |
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