Decoding plant organellar signaling under heat stress

Escalating global temperatures have substantial impacts on crop yields, with each one-degree Celsius increase resulting in a 3-7% average reduction in crop productivity, representing multi-billion-dollar losses annually in Australia. Consequently, predicted hotter and drier climates will lead to more severe crop failures and worsening global food security. However, our understanding of early heat stress events, which are crucial for plant adaptation, is limited. By combining cutting-edge molecular biology and synthetic biology tools with high-throughput analysis, this project will explore the cellular signature of plants in the first minutes of perceiving heat stress. Mapping these early events will give a new perspective of how plant perceive and respond to heat. This knowledge will greatly benefit Australia's agricultural sector by facilitating the design of heat-tolerant crops, essent