Salomé Prat and her team investigate several aspects related with the hormonal control of plant growth and thermomorphogenic responses, and the day length control of potato tuberization. In order to define the regulatory pathways governing day length control of tuber formation, we selected a strictly photoperiodic andigena species, amenable for genetic transformation (Ann Rev Plant Biol., 2006), which is now widely used by the potato research community. Identification of PIFs as potato DELLA interactors (Nature, 2008) opened a fully new line of research in Arabidopsis, where we made important contributions such as the regulation of PIFs by BIN2 (Genes & Dev, 2014), the competitive interaction of ELF3 and PIF4 (Curr Biol, 2015), or the more recent discovery that PIF4 switches BES1/BZR1 transcriptional activity from a repressive into an activator function (EMBO J, 2018). Our research in potato led to the identification of SP6A as a main tuberigen signal (Nature, 2011), and did contribute to identify the potato earliness locus as encoding stable alleles of StCDF1 (Nature, 2013), in addition to show an indirect regulatory function of potato CONSTANS in SP6A control (Curr Biol, 2016). We also took part in the study of the origin and photoperiodic adaptation of modern European cultivars (Nature Ecol Evol, 2019) and recently identified the potato SP6A and GERMIN genes as two direct targets of the TAC-SP6A complex (Plant J, 2020).
She was a coordinator of the COSMIC EIG CONCERT-Japan project with the two leading Institutes of the Bill and Melinda Gates (FAU) and Asian consortiums (RIKEN) for cassava breeding improvement, addressed to the comparative study of potato and cassava storage organ development. Her work in potato has been accepted for publication in high impact Journals despite involving a crop species, hence underscoring the team's capacity of performing ground-breaking research in non-model species. We have by now acquired a unique expertise in potato physiology and the control of tuber formation, RNA profiling, scRNA, ChiP-seq, and DAP-seq studies. Scientific achievements of our team are illustrated by more than 100 publications in highly ranked scientific journals and by numerous invitations as plenary/keynote speaker at major international conferences.
Selected publications
1. Nieto C, Catalan P, Luengo LM, Legris M, López-Salmerón V, Davière JM, Casal JJ, Ares S, Prat S (2022) COP1 dynamics integrate conflicting seasonal light and thermal cues in the control of Arabidopsis elongation. Sci Adv 8: eabp8412. 10.1126/sciadv.abp8412.
2. Nicolas M, Torres-Pérez R, Wahl V, Cruz-Oró E, Rodriguez-Buey ML, Zamarreño AM, Martín-Jouve B, García-Mina JM, Oliveros JC, Prat S, Cubas P (2022) Spatial control of potato tuberization by the TCP transcription factor BRANCHED1b. Nat Plants 8; 281-294. 10.1038/s41477-022-01112-2.
3. Murcia G, Nieto- C, Sellaro R, Prat S, Casal JJ (2022) Hysteresis in PHYTOCHROME-INTERACTING FACTOR 4 and EARLY-FLOWERING 3 dynamics dominates warm daytime memory in Arabidopsis. Plant Cell 34: 2188-2204. 10.1093/plcell/koac078.
4. Zhang X, Campbell R, Ducreux LJM, Morris J, Hedley PE, Mellado-Ortega E, Roberts AG, Stephens J, Bryan GJ, Torrance L, Prat S, Taylor MA (2020) TERMINAL FLOWER‐1/CENTRORADIALIS inhibits tuberisation via protein interaction with the tuberigen activation complex. Plant J 103: 2263-2278. 10.1111/tpj.14898.
5. Gutaker RM, Weiß CL, Ellis D, Anglin NL, Knapp S, Fernández-Alonso LJ, Prat S, Burbano HA (2019) The origins and adaptation of European potatoes reconstructed from historical genomes. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 3: 1093-1101. 10.1038/s41559-019-0921-3.
FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
