TelSUMOre – Exploring SUMO protease involvement in telomere-dependent gene regulation in plants

TelSUMOre is a project designed to tackle the association between the SUMO proteases and telomere-associated gene expression regulation in Arabidopsis thaliana. The project integrates state-of-the-art functional genomics, as well as proteomic and transcriptomic approaches to dissect the nuclear protein complex involved in SUMO-telomere association and co-regulation in plants. While answering to fundamental questions, TelSUMOre will also give molecular basis to study and potentiate environmental tolerance and yield in crops. From the phenotypes obtained for SUMO protease mutants, we expect that a correlation exists between interesting traits (i.e. plant longevity, seed production, plant shape, specialized metabolites biosynthesis) and the telomere-associated gene expression regulation.