Plant Physiology Webinar
Plant Lipids: Signaling and Metabolism
Celebrating the February 2025 Focus Issue on Plant Lipids
Thursday, February 13, 2025
9 AM PST | Noon EST | 5 PM UTC | 6 PM CET
About This Webinar
The February 2025 issue of Plant Physiology, edited by Aruna Kilaru, Ana Laxalt, Sébastien Mongrand, and Teun Munnik, spotlights research on plant lipids. Plant lipids play a pivotal role in various facets of plant growth, development, and responses to environmental cues. Beyond their significance as structural components of cellular membranes, lipids have been revealed through recent studies to act as critical signaling molecules and regulators of metabolic pathways in plants.
This webinar features speakers Rebecca Roston, Yingqi Cai, and Philip D. Bates, speaking on their work in the focus issue, and is moderated by Plant Physiology Assistant Features Editor Maneesh Lingwan.
SPEAKERS
Rebecca Roston: From sensing to acclimation: The role of membrane lipid remodeling in plant responses to low temperatures
Rebecca L. Roston is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research focuses on the molecular and biophysical mechanisms underpinning plant membrane adaptation to environmental stresses, particularly cold and freezing conditions. Her lab investigates the dynamic processes of membrane lipid remodeling, protein interactions, and their roles in plant growth and photosynthetic efficiency. Using advanced microscopy, molecular biology, and biochemical techniques, her work spans model systems like Arabidopsis thaliana and diverse grasses to uncover conserved stress responses and improve plant resilience, as described in her recent Update review (https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiae382). Beyond research, she is committed to education and mentorship, teaching and advising the student and post-doc organization CROPS.
Yingqi Cai: Packaging vegetable oils: Lipid droplet biogenesis in plant cells
Yingqi Cai is a research assistant professor at University of North Texas, where she earned her PhD degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. After completing her doctoral degree, she joined Brookhaven National Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher, where she investigated the regulatory mechanism of plant lipid metabolism and developed strategies to enhance lipid production in plant vegetative tissues without compromising plant growth. Her research interests include plant lipid metabolism, storage lipid compartmentation and metabolic engineering in plants. Her current research focuses on understanding the cellular mechanisms underlying the biogenesis and modulation of lipid droplets, subcellular organelles that store neutral lipids in the aqueous cytoplasm and play an important role in plant development, stress responses and energy storage. Her recently published Update review article (https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiae533) highlights critical advances in revealing key protein factors and mechanisms for lipid droplet biogenesis and modulation, and discusses future perspectives for bridging knowledge gaps in plant lipid droplet biology.
Philip D. Bates: Understanding lipid metabolic dynamics for pathway discovery and identifying bottlenecks within bioengineering
Philip D. Bates is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Biological Chemistry at Washington State University. His focus is on the elucidation plant lipid metabolic pathways leading to the production of essential membrane lipids and valuable plant oils, including characterizing how different plants can produce oils with widely different fatty acid compositions and thus distinct physical/chemical properties. One key approach is tracing carbon flux through the lipid metabolic network utilizing isotopic labeling to discover novel metabolic pathways, or identify metabolic adaptations due to mutation or genetic engineering. In the recent Plant Physiology article (https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiae121 ) we utilized isotopic tracing to characterize metabolic bottlenecks that limit accumulation of oil in leaves when vegetative tissues are engineered as an oil storage tissue and identified an unexpected futile cycle that inhibited carbon capture and reduced plant growth.
MODERATOR
Maneesh Lingwan, Plant Physiology Assistant Features Editor
Maneesh Lingwan is a Research Scientist I at Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. He is a passionate plant biochemist interested in analytical techniques and strategies to decode cell-specific metabolism. His current research focuses on understanding plant lipid metabolism to enhance medium-chain fatty acids in oil crops. Besides research, Maneesh aims to inspire and educate younger students by providing valuable insights about STEM careers and helping them to navigate opportunities.
