Bernard Lab

Research focus

ERC Starting Grant · 2019

The missing link: how do membrane lipids interplay with ATG proteins to instruct plant autophagy

Autophagy is an intracellular catabolic process critical to eukaryotic life and indispensable for plant survival to drought, nutrient scarcity or pathogen attacks. Autophagy relies on the formation of specialized vesicles called autophagosomes (AP) which engulf and deliver cell components to the lytic vacuole. AP biogenesis is carried out by a group of dedicated proteins (named ATG) and hinges on intense remodelling events and on the remarkable capacity of an initial membrane, the phagophore, to assemble de novo, shape like a cup, expand while maintaining structure and function and re-shape to a complete vesicle. To date the molecular mechanisms underlying these events remain elusive.…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.