Understanding Autophagy in Wheat with Dr. Andrei Smertenko

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Show Notes & Resources Mentioned:

View Andrei’s previous podcast episode titled “Perixisomes and Drought-tolerant Wheat with Andrei Smertenko“.

Contact Information:

Contact Dr. Andrei Smertenko via email at andrei.smertenko@wsu.edu or via phone at (509) 335-5795.


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Episode Transcription:

Drew Lyon: Hello. Welcome to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. I’m your host, Drew Lyon, and I want to thank you for joining me as we explore the world of small grains production and research at Washington State University. In each episode, I speak with researchers from WSU and the USDA-ARS to provide you with insights into the latest research on wheat and barley production. If you enjoy the WSU Wheat Beat podcast do us a favor and subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcasting app and leave us a review while you’re there so others can find the show too.

[ Music ]

Drew Lyon: My guest today is Dr. Andrei Smertenko. Andrei is a cell biologist at the Institute of Biological Chemistry in the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resources Sciences. Andrei joined WSU over 6 years ago. Andrei wants to understand how cells respond to stress, and how we can harness processes inside cells to improve crop yields in arid climate. Hello, Andrei.

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: Hello, Drew.

Drew Lyon: So, what would you like to talk to us about today?

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: Well, I would like to talk about my new project on a process called autophagy in the wheat. It was recently founded by Orville Vogel with research fund.

Drew Lyon: So, what is autophagy? Autophagy? Is that how you say it?

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: Autophagy.

Drew Lyon: Ah, autophagy. Ok.

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: Autophagy is a greek word that means “self consuming”. Well, as you know, the body of all living organisms are made of cells, including bodies of plants, animals, and human, and each cell, in turn, consists of many different structures. So, during autophagy, cells can digest some of their own structures down to simple molecules such as amino acids or fats, and then they can recycle these molecules to build new structures.

Drew Lyon: So, why would a cell want to eat itself?

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: Well, there are many reasons, but you can distill them to serene. So, one is recycling. Similar structures may become obsolete after some time, and cells don’t need them anymore. Another reason is to replace structures that become defunct due to regular wear and tear, and the third reason is to survive starvation. When the plant doesn’t get enough food, cells digest less important structures to get by until the fast is over. So, as we know, plants produce their own food from carbon dioxide, water, and minerals, and they use sun energy to do this. And so, when there is not enough light, plants cannot produce enough food, and starve. Under these conditions, autophagy becomes very important for plant survival.

Drew Lyon: So, is autophagy unique to plants or is it in all forms of life?

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: Yeah, indeed, so this is a very common process to all the fungi, animals, and humans. So, in fact, autophagy is so exciting that in 2016, a Japanese scientist, Yoshinori Ohsumi, who discovered autophagy was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Drew Lyon: Okay, so why is this so exciting, and how does it apply to plants, I guess?

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: Well, let’s talk about the human for a moment.

Drew Lyon: Okay.

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: One may say that autophagy is a way to rejuvenate our body. Cells, like many of us, like hoarding. So, over time, they accumulate many unnecessary structures. Autophagy helps to convert this junk into resources that help cells to perform better. Apparently, autophagy slows down with age, and if you can learn how to make autophagy more active, we could alleviate the symptoms of aging and increase the quality of human life.

Drew Lyon: Hm, I think I could use a little bit of that autophagy. So, I hope they hurry up with this thing. Okay. So, clearly, autophagy is helpful in human health, but what does it do for plants?

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: Well, it’s equally important for plants, and in particular, for survival of plants in hot and dry weather, just as we have here on the Palouse. So, on the hot summer day, cell structures could be damaged, and this damage is mostly caused by heat. So, plants can control the temperature of their body by evaporating water from the leaf surface. Just like we feel better on the scorching hot day after a cool shower. However, here in the Palouse, the rain is very rare during summer, and for this reason, the soil moisture would be very low, and so plants cannot use water to cool down, they overheat, and heat damages many structures. So, under these conditions, autophagy, they ingest the structures and replaces them with new. In a nutshell, autophagy alleviates damage caused by adverse weather and makes plants more healthy. Healthy plants will yield more. So, my project focuses on the analysis of autophagy in wheat plants grown here in the Palouse, and overall, our aim is to harness and increase the power of autophagy for increasing the resiliency of crops like wheat.

Drew Lyon: Ok, so how do you– what information– I assume, at some point you want to transfer this information to breeders so they could do that. What are you measuring? I guess I’m uncertain, how do you measure autophagy? How do you know that a plant is better at this than another plant?

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: Well, this is exactly a question that is at the heart of my research program. So, currently, we don’t have a very good markers or very good parameters that we can use the activity of autophagy in wheat. So, the goal of our project is to identify these parameters, and then once we know what these parameters are, and how we can measure, then we can go to a collection of germplasm available at WSU, and screen this germplasm for genotypes with more active autophagy. And once we know what the genotypes are, we can identify underlying genes, and then these genes could be used by breeders to develop novel varieties.

Drew Lyon: Okay, and particularly, you see this fitting in this stressful environments like we have here in Eastern Washington?

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: Yeah, absolutely, and with predictions that climate will become less stable, we will have more heat waves over summer. Using autophagy to increase productivity of wheat here is very promising.

Drew Lyon: Well, I wish you all the luck on this. I’m going to kind of hold out for these humans guys to get that figured out pretty soon, so I can do a little getting rid of some junk I’ve accumulated over the years. [ Andrei laughs ] Thank you very much for sharing this information with us! I think our listeners will be very interested to hear how this research progresses.

Dr. Andrei Smertenko: Thank you very much, Drew, for having me here. I was very glad to share my news with the audience!

[ Music ]

Drew Lyon: Thanks for joining us and listening to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. If you like what you hear don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcasting app. If you have questions or topics, you’d like to hear on future episodes please email me at drew.lyon — that’s lyon@wsu.edu –(drew.lyon@wsu.edu). You can find us online at smallgrains.wsu.edu and on Facebook and Twitter @WSUSmallGrains. The WSU Wheat Beat podcast is a production of CAHNRS Communications and the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University. I’m Drew Lyon, we’ll see you next time.

Categories: Podcast