Involvement of EXtracellular vesicles in cell wall remodelling and InTercellular communication during the apical growth of PLANt cells.

forthcoming

In today’s fast-paced world, the need for innovative solutions leads to a preference for applied sciences over fundamental research, to the detriment of possible ground-breaking discoveries and revolutions in the future. This is the case of plant extracellular nanovesicles (PEVs), small vesicles secreted by plants which were first discovered in plant defence against pathogens, but that were soon co-opted by the biomedical research as promising nutraceuticals and drug delivery tools. To date, the majority of scientific literature on PEVs focuses on their possible therapeutic uses. Nonetheless, little is known about their biogenesis, secretion mechanism, and function in the plant kingdom, especially in physiological processes such as cell growth. This enormous gap in knowledge not only hinders their exploitation in plant biotechnology and agronomy, but also limits their safety in medical applications. EXIT PLAN will fill in this gap addressing three main research objectives (ROs), through three research work packages (WPs). First, the project will assess the nature of PEVs secreted during the apical growth of plant cells (RO1, WP2), and in particular pollen and root hairs. For this purpose, biomedical techniques for the characterisation of human nanovesicles will be readapted to isolate and characterise PEVs, during the secondment at Nottingham Trent University. Then, RO1 will be furtherly investigated at the University of Zurich, using plant transformation, advanced microscopy, and omics analyses to identify different PEVs populations. The same approach will be adopted to unveil how PEVs are externalised from the cell wall (RO2, WP3). Finally, the techniques learned during the outgoing phase will be implemented with a molecular biology approach at the University of Bologna, during the return phase, to understand the role of PEVs in cellular communication during cell growth (RO3, WP4), identifying PEVs targets and understanding the effects of PEV-based signalling.