DPHYS: Department Physiology and Signaling

Modern agriculture faces the challenging task of feeding a steadily growing worldwide population while enduring more and more adverse conditions due to climate change. In this context the DPHYS department objective is to gain a basic understanding of the mechanisms by which plants adapt to modifications in nutritional and environmental conditions. The three teams of the department focus on complementary questions, with shared interests in primary metabolic processes such as photosynthesis, photorespiration and energy-balance (CCARS and MetaboActions groups), biotic and abiotic stress-related hormone signaling (CCARS and STRESS groups), and signaling modules linked to nutritional status such as carbon-nitrogen balance (STRESS and MetaboActions groups).

A common and growing interest of all teams concerns how stress responses and metabolism will be impacted by two main effects of current climate change: the ongoing increases in atmospheric CO2 and the global warming. The CCARS team is notably coordinating the ANR HIPATH project (2018-2022) on the impact of high CO₂ on pathogenesis responses.

While the teams of DPHYS also work on crop species such as wheat and tomato, the elucidation of fundamental questions mainly uses genetic, biochemical, physiological, and omics analyses in Arabidopsis. Groups have a track record of using metabolite analysis to resolve scientific questions, and the department hosts the PMM metabolomics platform (part of the SPOmics, Paris Saclay Omics Integrated Platform), which proposes state-of-the-art tools to quantify primary and secondary metabolites, to use isotope labelling to assess C and N allocation, and to elucidate specific metabolic pathways.

The Department DPHYS consists of 3 teams :

CCARS: Climate Change & Redox Signaling   Group leader: Graham Noctor
MetaboActions: Signaling, regulation and metabolic interactions   Group leader: Michael Hodges
STRESS: Stress signaling   Group leader: Jean Colcombet