What we expect you to know

Terminology

You should know, what these terms mean and you should be able to explain them in your own words.

Compartments . ER . Golgi . Exocytosis . Endocytosis . Trans Golgi Network . Multivesicular Body . Exosomes . Clathrin . Cotranslational and posttranslational transport . vSNARES . tSNARES . Cellulose synthase . Microfibril

German-English Glossary

 

 

 

Content

 

  • You can explain, what compartments are, and what they are good for

  • You can sketch down the path of an organelle and of a secreted protein

  • You can name one animal and one plant example for signalling through vesicle transport

  • You can explain, how the cell wall is synthetised and what are old and young layers

  • You can explain, how polar auxin transport is generated

 

Vertiefung (for Bachelor students)

  • 1. Is a nucleus a compartment? Justify your answer
  • 2. A small ribosomal subunit from spinach needs 10 hours in your centrifugation set-up to reach its final destination. How long does the large ribosomal subunit need?
  • 3. In a study on a novel peptoid targeting mitochondria, we observed that Wortmannin blocked the uptake completely, while Ikarugamycin did not block uptake. What is your explanation?
  • 4. The fungus Botrytis cinerea secretes exosomes with miRNA to block plant defence. As charged molecule, miRNA cannot pass the plant membrane. How does this work then?
  • 5. How would the shape of a root hair change, when you destroy actin filaments with the inhibitor Latrunculin B?
  • 6. Plasmolysis is often used as test to find out, whether a plant cell is alive? Why does this work?

 

Special topic (Master students)

Superoxide Dismutase is a very central enzyme for the detoxification of reactive oxygen species (ROS). It converts superoxide, one of the most reactive ROS, into hydrogen peroxide, which is then further detoxified by catalase. Since ROS can be formed in different sites of the cell, there are several versions of SOD that are localised in different sites. Here, you have the sequences of four SODs from Arabidopsis thaliana and your task is to find out, where they are in the cell and to explain, how you arrive at your conclusion.

 

Read more

  • Cui Y, Gao JY, He YL, Jiang LW (2020) Plant extracellular vesicles. Protoplasma 257, 3-12. more... (can be downloaded when you are in the KIT net or connected by vpn).