Environmental Stress Signaling in Plants

The SEAP Group comprises 5 staff scientists and 3-4 postdocs and PhD students. Our research focus is the understanding of the signaling pathways and molecular responses to environmental stresses, both biotic and abiotic, with basic and applied interest. In particular we are interested in (1) the response to salinity stress, the homeostatic regulation of sodium contents in Arabidopsis and rice, (2) mineral nutrition of plants, specially potassium and nitrate, and (3) early signaling events in the response to bacterial pathogens and plant immunity establishment in Solanaceae. Common aspects in the research activities are the characterization of ion transporters and signal transduction mechanisms including calcium signaling, phosphorylation of proteins and transient redox modifications of specific targets.