Frank Van Breusegem
Oxidative Stress and Cell Death
VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, UGent

PhD: Univ. of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium,'97                             VIB Group leader since 2001

e-mail phone +32 9 331 39 20 ADDRESS

Current team members
Group leader: Frank Van Breusegem
Postdoctoral scientists: Katrien Van Der Kelen, Per Mühlenbock, Sandy Vanderauwera, Vanesa Tognetti
Ph.D. Students: Annelies Inzé, Cezary Waszczak, Inge De Clercq, Jacob Pollier, Liana Tsiatsiani, Lorin Spruyt, Silke Jacques
Support personnel: Brigitte Van De Cotte, Debbie Rombaut, Jordi Denecker, Michaël Vandorpe

Keywords
oxidative stress – transcriptional regulatory networks – abiotic stress tolerance metacaspases

Science

Suboptimal growth conditions caused by drought, temperature, salt and pathogen-related stress are leading to worldwide yield losses in cultivated crops. It is anticipated that this problem becomes even bigger in the future, as climatic changes will cause more temperature and drought stress, and, in the meantime, the demand for plants for food, feed and bioenergy is increasing. This has encouraged the development of appropriate breeding strategies targeting adaptation and has made crop stress tolerance a major objective in plant biotechnology research (Vanderauwera et al., 2007). 
Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) have emerged as important regulators of plant stress responses (Van Breusegem et al., 2008). Perturbation in ROS production and/or scavenging are sensed by plant cells as a ‘warning’ message and genetic programs leading to stress acclimation or cell death are switched on (Gadjev et al., 2006).  Knowledge on regulatory events during ROS signal transduction is now only scratching the surface. Through a combined top-down and bottom-up genomics approach we are dissecting the gene network governing ROS signal transduction in plants and pinpoint genes that are potential candidates for innovative molecular breeding strategies to develop stress-tolerant crops.
A second cornerstone of the group studies the function of metacaspases and their inhibitors in Arabidopsis thaliana (Vercammen et al., 2007). These cysteine proteases are in analogy with animal caspases primary suspects to regulate or execute plant programmed cell death.  We have shown recently that metacaspases, analogous to caspases, show cysteine-dependent autocatalytic processing. Although, in contrast to caspases they show arginine/lysine-specific protease activity  (Vercammen et al., 2006).

Hauben M, Haesendonckx B, Standaert E, Van Der Kelen K, Azmi A, Akpo H, Van Breusegem F, Guisez Y, Bots M, Lambert B, Laga B, De Block M
Energy use efficiency is characterized by an epigenetic component that can be directed through artificial selection to increase yield
P NATL ACAD SCI USA 106, 20109-14, 2009



Van Breusegem F, Bailey-Serres J, Mittler R
Unraveling the tapestry of networks involving reactive oxygen species in plants
PLANT PHYSIOL 147, 978-84, 2008



Vanderauwera S, De Block M, Van De Steene N, Van De Cotte B, Metzlaff M, Van Breusegem F
Silencing of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase in plants alters abiotic stress signal transduction
P NATL ACAD SCI USA 104, 15150-5, 2007



Vercammen D, Declercq W, Vandenabeele P, Van Breusegem F
Are metacaspases caspases?
J CELL BIOL 179, 375-80, 2007



Gadjev I, Vanderauwera S, Gechev T, Laloi C, Minkov I, Shulaev V, Apel K, Inzé D, Mittler R, Van Breusegem F
Transcriptomic footprints disclose specificity of reactive oxygen species signaling in Arabidopsis
PLANT PHYSIOL 141, 436-45, 2006

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