Relationship between the signalling pathways of TOR (Target Of Rapamycin) and PI3K (Phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase) kinases: impact on the salinity and osmotic stresses response

The TOR (Target Of Rapamycin, a protein kinase) and PI3K (Phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase, a lipid kinase) signalling pathways are interconnected and relatively well conserved among eukaryotic organisms. These proteins are the subjects of many studies in animals since they are implicated in the control of cell growth and proliferation and in the onset of several cancers or metabolic disorders in humans. In the past years, our work has been focussed on the determination of the role of TOR and PI3K in Arabidopsis. We have indeed shown a prominent implication of these two kinases in the regulation of growth and stress responses in plants.
We propose, during this PhD, to better characterize the molecular and genetics links between the TOR and PI3K signalling pathways and to better define their roles in the plant responses and adaptation to salt and osmotic stresses, with a special focus on the accumulation of proline. The goal of this thesis work will be to investigate at different levels (metabolism, transcriptomic, proteomic, whole cell and tissue) the impact of either genetic or chemical perturbations of the activity of these two kinases on the plant responses to salt and osmotic stresses.

PhD subject IJPB 2011 from research group Signalisation and nutritional recycling