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
