venus flytrap

Dr. Imara Perera-Research Assistant Professor
Plant Stress Responses

Research Interests:
 The overall goal of my research is to understand how plants sense and respond to environmental cues and stimuli. In particular, the research is focused on the role of the phosphoinositide-mediated signaling pathway in plant responses to abiotic and biotic stresses including gravity, drought, cold, and pathogen attack. We have taken a molecular approach to generate plants with altered phosphoinositide metabolism. These plants are a good model system to study the involvement of the phosphoinositide pathway in a stress response and to determine the downstream effectors of the pathway.

Selected Publications:

 Perera IY, Hung CY, Brady S, Muday GK and WF Boss (2006) A universal role for inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate-mediated signaling in plant gravitropism. Plant Physiol. (in press)

Perera IY, Davis AJ, Galanopoulou D, Im YJ and WF Boss phosphate kinases.FEBS Lett. 579:3427-32.

Padmanaban S, Lin X, Perera IY, Kawamura Y, and H Sze (2004) Differential expression of Vacuolar H+-ATPase subunit c genes in tissues active in membrane trafficking and their roles in plant growth as revealed by RNAi. Plant Physiol. 134: 1514-1526

Davis AJ, Perera IY and WF BOss (2004) Cyclodextrins enhance recombinant phosphatidylinositol phosphate kinase activity. J. Lipid Res 45:1783-1789

Perera IY, Love J, Heilmann I, Thompson WF and WF Boss (2002) Up-regulation of phosphoinositide metabolism in tobacco cells constitutively expressing the human type I inositol polyphosphate 5-phosphatase Plant Physiol 129:1795-1806

Perera IY, Heilmann I, Chang SC, Boss WF, Kaufman BO (2001) A role for inositol 1,4,5- trisphosphate in gravitropic signaling and the retention of cold-perceived gravistimulation of oat (Avena sativa) shoot pulvini. Plant Physiol 125: 1449-1507

Heilmann I, Shin J, Huang J, Perera IY, Davies E. (2001) Transient dissociation of polyribosomes and concurrent recruitment of calreticulin and calmodulin transcripts in gravistimulated maize pulvini. Plant Physiol 127:1193-203

Heilmann I, Perera IY, Gross W and WF Boss (2001) Plasma membrane phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate levels decrease with time in culture. Plant Physiol 126: 1507-1518