Anabella Aguilera | Disentangling the role of regulated cell death in cyanobacteria
Channel: CyanoWorld
Date: 2022-07-27

Anabella Aguilera - Linneaus University, Sweden

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lucuma_volatil
Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anabella-Aguilera

Disentangling the role of regulated cell death in cyanobacteria

In contrast to accidental cell death, regulated cell death (RCD) is a genetically encoded signaling cascade that culminates in cell suicide and can be activated as the final step of cell differentiation or induced upon biotic or abiotic stress. In cyanobacteria, RCD is suggested to play a key role in developmental processes, such as akinete and heterocyst differentiation. Also, evidence has accumulated on RCD mechanisms triggered under unfavorable environmental conditions. However, our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and molecular machinery underpinning cell death in cyanobacteria remains largely limited.
In this talk, I will review our research on RCD and the recent findings working with the model cyanobacterium Synechocystis PCC 6803 (Aguilera & Berdun et al., 2022). We describe a novel cell death program induced by heat stress with features resembling eukaryotic ferroptosis. Cyanobacterial ferroptosis is suppressed by the canonical ferroptosis inhibitors and by the addition of the antioxidant glutathione and ascorbic acid. This pathway is also characterized by an early depletion of both antioxidants and by lipid peroxidation. These results indicate that the main hallmarks of eukaryotic ferroptosis are conserved in cyanobacteria, and suggest that ferroptosis might be an ancient cell death program. Moreover, this work contributes to understanding how cyanobacteria cope with environmental stress and activate RCD. Finally, I will present our next steps aiming to uncover mechanisms of stress response and RCD in bloom-forming cyanobacteria and assess their importance in bloom dynamics.

This talk is part of the CyanoWorld online seminar series, hosted by Nicolas Schmelling and Ilka Axmann, and was held on Zoom on April 14th, 2022.

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