Plants manufacture specialised metabolites that aid in interaction and survival with their environment. These compounds, termed "secondary metabolites", are a rich source of health benefits in human nutrition, and also represent the building blocks in the development of new pharmaceuticals. However, secondary metabolism is limited in occurrence, and some compounds are restricted temporally and spatially to certain taxonomic groups.
Development and secondary metabolism are closely connected processes. Part of this association depends on differential gene expression: while information is instructed and wired into the genome, its regulation and display in certain cell types will ultimately determine the ability to accumulate different metabolites.
The control of secondary metabolism in response to environmental and developmental signals is exerted by transcription factors and transcriptional co-regulators that act on cis-regulatory DNA sequences that determine when, where and how genes are expressed, but also on other types of regulatory proteins and RNAs. At TOMSlab we are interested in the transcriptional regulation of secondary metabolism. This has included genomic analyses of transcription factor families and global gene expression analyses, as well as an interest in systems biology approaches that integrate transcriptomics and metabolomics datasets.
The current focus of the laboratory is the worldwide study of gene regulatory networks controlling phenylpropanoid and isoprenoid metabolism in climacteric and non-climacteric fleshy fruits, such as tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) and grapevine (Vitis vinifera), respectively. We are also interested in several other species that possess potential pharmaceutical properties that make them important for drug discovery and functional food improvement.
- Generation of omics data in plant species and cell cultures induced for the production of secondary metabolites.
- Development of computational algorithms for the integration of multi-omics data.
- In vitro cultivation of commercial fruit species or species of medicinal interest and development of genetic transformation platforms.
- Functional characterisation of genes regulating the specialised metabolism of plants.
- Genome-wide characterisation of the R2R3-MYB family of transcription factors in plants
We attempted to characterise the MYB family in different plant species by combining genome-wide and plant functional characterisation studies.
- Comprehensive omics approaches to identify novel regulators and unknown enzymatic steps of secondary metabolic pathways
We associate transcriptomic and metabolic data in plant organs or cell cultures to isolate unknown secondary metabolic enzymes and their transcriptional regulators.
- Análisis de todo el genoma de las respuestas de la vid a las tensiones ambientales, incluidas las influenciadas por el cambio climático
We are interested in addressing different bioinformatics data coupled with experimental data to model plant stress responses, using grapevine as a model for non-climacteric fleshy fruits.
Collaborator
- Chen Zhang - Universitat de València
Work team
- Jone Echevarria Alberdi - Universitat de València
- David Navarro Payá - Universitat de València
- Alberto Pérez Tejeda - Universitat de València
- Antonio Santiago Pajuelo - Universitat de València
Burjassot/Paterna Campus
Science ParkC/ Catedrático José Beltrán, 2
46980 Paterna (Valencia)
