Current members of the research group

PLANT MITOCHONDRIAL DYNAMICS

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Adel Saeed Alsufyani

       My name is Adel Saeed Alsufyani, and I come from Taif, Saudi Arabia. I graduated from College of Teachers in Taif. After that, I taught biology in high school for almost a year. Then, I won a scholarship from the King of Saudi Arabia to complete my education at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. Thus, I’ve been a member of Dr. Logan’s research group since September 2010.

My research

I’m a MSc student majoring in Molecular Cell Biology, and my project focuses on mitochondria calcium dynamics. We are investigating the role of physical proximity and interactions between mitochondria and ER in cell health and death.

Little is known about how mitochondrial calcium is regulated in plants: no plant calcium mitochondrial Ca2+-ATPase pumps and no mitochondrial calcium channels have been identified in the literature. In addition, little is know concerning any physical interactions between mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum (ER, an important cellular calcium store) and how these modulate cellular calcium fluxes2. We have identified an Arabidopsis gene, that we tentatively call MCU1, for mitochondrial calcium uptake 1, encoding a protein with features suggestive of a role in mitochondrial calcium dynamics. Fluorescent protein fusions to this protein demonstrate that it localises to the mitochondrial inner membrane. We have identified two independent Arabidopsis T-DNA lines with insertions in MCU1 and tests are underway to determine if the mutants are defective in mitochondria calcium dynamics. Furthermore, we have generated various stable transgenic lines expressing fluorescent marker proteins to enable visualisation of mitochondria and the ER in the same cells and to measure mitochondria calcium fluxes in these.