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Guillaume Pilot

Associate Professor
  • School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
  • College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Synopsis:

Dr. Pilot's research aims to understand the molecular regulation of amino acid transport and translocation in plants, focusing on the study of amino acid transporters. He is also interested in deciphering the mechanisms used by pathogens to extract amino acids from plants and identifying some of the molecular actors controlling protein accumulation in soybean seeds.

Description:

Amino acid metabolism and transport needs to be finely tuned to carbon and nitrogen availability, and to meet demand from the growing organs. Dr. Pilot's laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms controlling the activity of amino acid metabolism and transport in plants. He want to understand (1) how amino acids are transported across membranes at the subcellular and plant levels, (2) how cells sense amino acid levels inside the organelles and the apoplasm, and (3) how the signals are transduced to changes in metabolic and transport activity. This knowledge would open ways to engineer nitrogen fluxes in the plant, which would enable to create crops with higher protein in storage organs like seeds, roots or tubers, or with higher nitrogen use efficiency.

About 100 amino acid transporters have been identified in Arabidopsis genome, but the roles of only ~15 of them are known. Dr. Pilot's lab characterized members of the UMAMIT family of amino acid exporters and showed that one of them is involved in exporting amino acids from the phloem sap in the roots.

Another project focuses on the characterization of the GDU family of genes from Arabidopsis. The GDU proteins associate with the membrane-bound ubiquitin ligases LOG2 and LULs to control amino acid export activity at the plasma membrane and ABA responses.

Little is known about the regulatory mechanisms controlling the expression of genes for the amino acid metabolic enzymes. Dr. Pilot's laboratory is searching for some of the genes involved in amino acid sensing and the corresponding signaling cascade using genetics.

Finally, the lab also studies how plant amino acid transporters are used by biotrophic pathogens for their nutrition in collaboration with Dr. McDowell (SPES, Virginia Tech).