Previous Seed Grant Winners
Where are they now?
In 1999, Vitaly Citovsky of the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology was awarded a seed grant for his proposal, "Protein Kinase Involved in Regulation of Plasmodesmata."
The seed grant that Dr. Vitaly and collaborator at BNL Dr. Hind received resulted in one major publication (Chen, M.-H., Sheng, J., Hind, G., Handa, A., & Citovsky, V. (2000), entitled Interaction between the tobacco mosaic virus movement protein and host cell pectin methylesterases is required for viral cell-to-cell movement. EMBO J. 19, 913-920.). The significance of this paper was underscored by its in Current Opinion in Plant Biology 3, 394-399 (2000).
The results of this research are summarized as follows:Virus-encoded movement protein (MP) mediates cell-to-cell spread of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) through plant intercellular connections, the plasmodesmata. The molecular pathway by which TMV MP interacts with the host cell is largely unknown. To better understand this process, a cell wall-associated protein that specifically binds the viral MP was purified from tobacco leaf cell walls and identified as pectin methylesterase (PME). In addition to TMV MP, PME is recognized by MPs of turnip vein clearing virus (TVCV) and cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV). The use of amino acid deletion mutants of TMV MP identified its domain necessary and sufficient for association with PME. Deletion of the PME-binding region resulted in inactivation of TMV cell-to-cell movement.