What we expect you to know

Terminology

You should know, what these terms mean and you should be able to explain them in your own words.

Compartments . ER . Golgi . Exocytosis . Endocytosis . Trans Golgi Network . Multivesicular Body . Exosomes . Clathrin . Cotranslational and posttranslational transport . vSNARES . tSNARES . Cellulose synthase . Microfibril

German-English Glossary

 

 

 

Content

 

  • You can explain, what compartments are, and what they are good for

  • You can sketch down the path of an organelle and of a secreted protein

  • You can name one animal and one plant example for signalling through vesicle transport

  • You can explain, how the cell wall is synthetised and what are old and young layers

  • You can explain, how polar auxin transport is generated

 

Vertiefung (for Bachelor students)

  • 1. Is a nucleus a compartment? Justify your answer
  • 2. A small ribosomal subunit from spinach needs 10 hours in your centrifugation set-up to reach its final destination. How long does the large ribosomal subunit need?
  • 3. In a study on a novel peptoid targeting mitochondria, we observed that Wortmannin blocked the uptake completely, while Ikarugamycin did not block uptake. What is your explanation?
  • 4. The fungus Botrytis cinerea secretes exosomes with miRNA to block plant defence. As charged molecule, miRNA cannot pass the plant membrane. How does this work then?
  • 5. How would the shape of a root hair change, when you destroy actin filaments with the inhibitor Latrunculin B?
  • 6. Plasmolysis is often used as test to find out, whether a plant cell is alive? Why does this work?

 

Special topic (Master students)

You have found a new signal response in plants triggered by specific mononterpenes emitted by Mint species to suppress competing plants. A structure-function study has shown that small molecular details on the monoterpenes decide on activity. For instance, reduction of an aldehyde side group causes complete loss of activity. You arrive at the conclusion that these compounds interact with a receptor triggering a signal pathway leading to programmed cell death of the target plant. Since these compounds are not membrane permeable, you arrive at the conclusion that this unknown receptor is located in the plasma membrane. In order to identify this receptor, you want to purify plasma membranes from plant cells. Try to find out by a literature search, how this can be achieved and design a working protocol for tobacco BY-2 cells.

 

Read more

  • Cui Y, Gao JY, He YL, Jiang LW (2020) Plant extracellular vesicles. Protoplasma 257, 3-12. more... (can be downloaded when you are in the KIT net or connected by vpn).